Sarah Mason - Society girls

Clemmie Colshannon, a London art appraiser framed (pun intended) by her boyfriend and subsequently fired, retreats to the bosom of her eccentric family in Cornwall to recover. But no sooner has she unpacked her bags than her sister, Holly, an energetic reporter who lives to scoop, enlists Clemmie's derring-do on a juicy story.

It seems that Emma McKellan, who writes the society pages for the Bristol Gazette, has disappeared days before her lavish wedding. As Holly and Clemmie search for clues on the missing bride (relishing the prospect of delicious scandal), they inadvertently steer themselves directly toward trouble.

In times of crisis, the Colshannon clan is always in the thick of thingsparticularly Clemmie's drama-queen mother, who has an affinity for saving wild animals, and her brother, who goes to outrageous extremes to impress a certain girl and succeeds only in terrifying her. Whether she likes it or not, Clemmie always seems to find herself in the throes of adventure. And sure enough, the whole family is soon fleeing to the south of France... with an ex-convict in hot pursuit.

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With all my love.

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Acknowledgments

Firstly, enormous thanks to my wonderful husband who has been simply amazing.

As always, my grateful thanks to my brilliant editors, Jo and Tara. Tara for her help on the early part of the book and Jo for all her work on the finished product while battling with the deadly combination of deadlines and my crappiness. Thank you for being continually good-humored and encouraging.

Many thanks to everyone at Time Warner for working so very hard and for their great support.

A huge thank you to my agent, Dinah, for not only being a brilliant agent but also for her friendship and support throughout an eventful year. I appreciate it greatly.

And to my mother, the most courageous woman I know and without whom I wouldn't have been able to write this book.

Friends and family. Well. The least said the better. But my mad sister-in-law, Tasha, is roaming the London Underground absolutely determined to sign someone's book whether they like it or not.

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Bonjour Madame!" I greet the lady behind the desk and put on my most charming smile. It always does to treat these ladies well. Some of them have the power of a small country.

She looks up from her work, peers at me over the top of her half-moon glasses and sniffs slightly as though she can smell my Englishness. My smile falters a little. I mean, I have been in a police station in England before. Once. So although I'm not exactly a hardened criminal, I do have some idea of the form. But do they do things differently in France?

"Mon frre est ici... " I start haltingly in my GCSE French. The problem with GCSE French is that you have to fight a constant urge to ask people their name, how old they are and where they live before you can get down to the brass tacks of any problem. "II est... er... em..." I'm trying desperately to find the word I need. I trawl through my limited vocabulary. It's no good, there's nothing that vaguely matches it. So I try the English phrase.

"UNDER ARREST."

It doesn't seem to fool her; she looks at me blankly. I try it again, this time with a French accent.

"ARRESTE."

"II est en tat d'arrestation?" she queries.

This sounds vaguely right so I nod.

"Qui s'appelle?"

"II s'appelle Barney Colshannon."

"Attendez l bas."

She gestures to some chairs by the wall, so Sam and I duly wander over to them and sit down.

Of course, I blame my mother for all this. She had just received Morgan the Pekinese's pet passport and suggested we all nip over to France for the weekend to see if it was working. He is a rather old and smelly dog with no teeth left in the front of his mouth and will pee on anything if you leave it in the middle of the room. I'm not quite sure what he is thinking when he tries to bite other dogs, he must be under the impression he can suck them to death. Anyway, despite being adored by my mother, Morgan and I have never quite seen eye to eye, so why we couldn't have just popped him on a cross channel ferry and waited to see if he came back I simply do not know. However, the pull of some French bread and cheap booze was simply too much for us and we all readily acquiesced.

My mother always makes France sound absolutely delightful as she is a bit of a Francophile at heart, but her version is solely based on Gerard Depardieu and some adverts she did for the French tourist board back in the eighties which involved her getting pissed on Bordeaux. According to her, France is just one big bit of cheese with plenty of wine and a few ooh-la-las thrown in. Not a police station in sight. This is a clearly inaccurate opinion because here I am in a French police station with no cheese, no wine and certainly no ooh-la-las.

We had all split up this morning to go our separate ways. I wanted to look at the shops, Barney went down on the beach and as Sam has the only real job out of all of us, he had to make some work phone calls. Sam is Barney's best friend. He has been since we moved to Cornwall about fifteen years ago and hence he's always been a presence in my life. I popped back to the hotel after my little shopping sortie (didn't buy anything as I am stony broke but that is another story) and the receptionist there gave me the message about Barney. I immediately went to get Sam because he is a lawyer and I was under the misapprehension that he might be of some use, and then we headed for the police station in double quick time. So at this precise moment my parents are sitting in a little caf somewhere in Le Touquet, expecting us to turn up any second but nonetheless having a raucous time and probably some cheese too, blissfully oblivious to the fact that their son has been arrested. Whereas I, by virtue of my French GCSE, sit here (which just goes to show that too much education can be a bad thing), with Sam who is busy smiling at some girl across the room.

Sam leans over and whispers to me, "Excellent French, by the way.

"Thank you."

"I particularly liked the ARREST thing."

"I couldn't think of the word in French."

"Saying it with a German accent was nothing less than a stroke of genius."

"It was a French accent," I spit out between gritted teeth. God, he is maddening.

"So tell me what the lady at the hotel said again?"

"She just said that Barney had been arrested for assault. He apparently broke some poor bloke's arm. My brother wouldn't assault anyone!" Barney is quite frankly the sweetest individual alive. He wouldn't come out of his room for three days when he accidentally killed the class hamster by tripping and falling on top of the shoebox as he was carrying it home for the weekend so you can imagine the tough sort of individual we're talking about.

"It does seem a bit strange."

"A bit strange? Sam, you're the bloody lawyer. You're going to have to make them release him."

"I am not a sodding criminal lawyer."

"But Barney wouldn't hurt a fly!"

"You just said that he broke someone's arm!"