When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it.

After the tragedy they’ve been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage?

#LastChanceInParis #LyndaMarron @eriu_books @Tr4cyF3nt0n #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour
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Claire and Ronan aren’t the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.

When their lives briefly intertwine, something extraordinary happens…

Extract

“Harrison D. Carter, known to those few who loved him as Harry, leaned back in his director’s chair and sighed.

‘Cut,’ he muttered under his breath, barely audibly, but the word was picked up by his mic and by the lackey at his side, whose job it was to attend to Harry’s every whim, even to the point of doing his yelling for him.

‘CUT,’ the lackey yelled and turned to his boss, ready for the next command.

Harry closed his eyes momentarily, as if considering a life-or-death choice: to cut the wire on the ticking time bomb or turn and run for the hills.

‘THAT’S A WRAP,’ he announced loudly, enjoying the resonance of his own voice. He stood at once and strode, back straight and head high, off the set.

Back in his makeshift office, Harry set about mixing himself a drink in the blender – the concoction of wheatgrass, green tea and eye of newt that his dietician had prescribed. While he was searching for a glass, the door opened, and Jennifer Fairchild, his PA, stepped in.

‘You must be over the moon,’ she said. Jenny’s tone, as usual, was preternaturally upbeat.

Before Harry could even begin to formulate an honest answer, Jenny had ducked to open a low cupboard and emerged with a highball glass. She held it out towards him so that he could pour his drink into it. His hand, as he lifted the weight of the full jug, began to tremble.

‘Here,’ said Jenny, ‘let me do it.’ She took the jug, poured the drink and handed the glass back to him.

‘Thanks, Jen.’ He took the glass. ‘Want some?’

‘Blended Kermit?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, thanks. Do you want me to fix you a real drink?’

Jenny was a trouper. With the sort of money she had behind her, she needn’t have worked a day in her life, but she seemed to get a kick out of helping people. It was like her gift or something.

‘Ya know something, Jennifer?’

‘What’s that, Harry?’

‘You’ve been doing things to make my life better since the first moment we met.’

‘That’s okay.’ She dismissed his compliment with a smile.

‘You pay me for it, you know.’

Harry had been on location in Mexico. He’d decided to skip home early to surprise Rita, his second wife, on what was the first anniversary of their wedding. He took the offer of a lift back to L.A. in his leading man’s Gulfstream IV. His house, when he got there, was deserted, but he made an educated guess as to where he was likely to find Rita. There was a jazz club in The Glen Centre where the piano player knew her name.

When Harry walked into Vibrato’s bar, Rita was sitting on that same pianist’s lap, his fingers playing arpeggios up her thigh and disappearing beneath the twinkling hem of her sequined bottle-green dress. Harry watched, disappointingly unsurprised, as Rita stretched out her foot in obvious excitement and dangled.”

Many thanks to @Tr4cyF3nt0n for inviting me to be part of the #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour 

About the Author

Lynda Marron was born in Dublin and spent her early childhood in a small town called Prosperous in Co. Kildare. At the age of nine she moved to Cork. She has not yet mastered the language. In her teens, she learned that reading curbed her anxiety, and that writing swept it clean away. Thus began her addiction to ink.

Lynda graduated from University College Cork in the mid-nineties with two degrees in microbiology, neither of which brought her any closer to her dream of writing a novel. She opted for the longer route, the Life Experience Creative Writing Course, which included teaching English to Italian teenagers, filing letters in a GP’s surgery, writing listicles for an online bookseller, and a twenty-five year module called Read All the Books.

She has made and raised four lovely humans, each of whom she taught to read. When she isn’t busy writing her second novel, you’ll find her reading, not weeding, in her rewilded garden. Her greatest ambition is to one day plant a forest, or even just an oak.

Last Chance in Paris is her debut novel.