A Question of Betrayal

by Zoe Miller

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Carrie Cassidy is afraid of the future, haunted by the past . . . Will moving on set her free, or put her in danger? A suspenseful and sophisticated story that will keep you gripped until the last page. Ever since the deaths of her adored parents, Carrie Cassidy has avoided risk and commitment, fearful of bringing something precious into her life only to lose it again. So now she finds herself working in yet another uninteresting job, and the love of her life, who wanted more than she could give, has left her. Will she ever move on? Then, a mysterious woman visits Carrie and reveals a secret that forces her to delve into her mother's past. As Carrie learns more about the woman she thought she knew, she finds herself looking at her own life and wondering if she's living it the way her mother would have wanted her to. Meanwhile there is someone watching Carrie who would rather the past stay buried . . .

Release date: April 16, 2015

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 432

Sample

September 1980

She doesn’t set out to save anyone’s life that evening. She’s twenty-four years of age and she’s far too busy saving herself, but she ends up rescuing both of them.

The private cove nestled between two headlands is her secret escape. She slips out every evening when the intensity of the bright afternoon has softened and there is a kind of lull, like the world holding its breath, before the day slides into the mellow evening, and sits in a secluded spot in the sand dunes. She hides her heartache behind a mask, and looks at the breadth of the sea frilling in and out from the far-off horizon, the immensity of a sky stretching on forever and the breeze teasing the marram grass so that it dances along the sand dunes.

Then there is the music. Up behind the sand dunes, there are a few bungalows and mobile homes scattered along the low headland overlooking the private cove. Most are occupied by families during the summer months but now, with the children back in school, they are closed up. Apart from one. Someone is still living in the big house down at the end of the track. The house that’s rumoured to be owned by a foreigner. It’s situated a little away from the rest overlooking the sea, and she knows it’s occupied because she has heard the sound of piano music floating on the air for the past three evenings. The music is like water dancing over stones. It’s alive, fluid and clear, the sparkling notes streaming out like bubbles into the calm, still air. It soothes her heart and fills her with something she’d never expected to feel again – hope. Listening to it, it’s easy to imagine her life could come good again and she could be anyone she wanted to be.

She could sit there forever listening to it, but she can’t. Sitting in the dunes is a secret luxury, helping her break away from the mess her life has become.

She usually has the cove to herself, so she is surprised to see the shoes. They are sitting in the sand dunes up beyond the line of seaweed and driftwood that indicates the tide mark. A man’s casual shoes; grey sneakers with white laces. When she gets closer, she sees the folded note stuck into one of them. It’s caught between tied laces to ensure it won’t blow away. It’s meant to be found. Her gut instinct tightens as cold fear slams into her head, pushing her own troubles into the background.

She plucks out the note with shaky fingers and opens it. It is a single sheet of white notepaper. There is a signature in black ink scrawled across the bottom of the sheet: Luis. Above that, three short sentences in a spidery writing that crawls across the page, in a language she guesses is French. She doesn’t understand it, except for the words scrawled just above the signature: Pardonnez-moi.

Pardon? For what? She looks up, her eyes scanning the horizon, hairs rising on the nape of her neck. At first, she is unable to focus and then she spots a lone figure, almost blending into the grey-silk movement of the sea, a figure walking out to the vast horizon, as purposefully as is possible against the tide.

She catches her breath. Panic surges through her, and then she is running, as fast as she can, across the strand, into the shallows, the water cold as it swirls around her feet. It splashes up, soaking the bottom of her jeans, weighing them down. She ploughs on as best she can. He is tall and blond and wearing a grey T-shirt. The water is up to his waist and any minute now, he could fall forward into it. Now it is up to her hips, the weight of water slowing her.

‘Hey, wait!’ she calls out, her words caught on the breeze. ‘Wait! Stop!’ She flaps her hands futilely, her breath heaving in her chest.

He doesn’t falter. The sea is up to his chest now. Chilled by the water and sick with anxiety, she makes a supreme effort. ‘Help, help,’ she screams. ‘Help me, please.’

Her heart skips a beat when he stops, alert, his head tilted. ‘Help, help,’ she cries again. ‘Help me.’

He turns around. He’s a slight distance away but she can gather by his expressionless face that he’s not really seeing her. He’s lost in a world of his own.

‘Over here,’ she shouts, ‘Luis?’

He doesn’t move and she’s terrified he’ll turn around again and be lost to her. He’s not far from where the beach shelves steeply, another few feet and he’ll be gone. If he turns in another direction, he could be caught by the rip tide. She pushes through the body of cold water, as the waves slap onto her chest, the tide almost lifting her off her feet.

‘Stop! I’m here,’ she calls out.

‘Go away,’ he shouts.

‘I can’t. I need help. Come back, please.’

‘No. Go away.’

‘Please, help me,’ she calls out. A wave lifts her off her feet. She screams at him as she falls backwards, the water closing over her head. She gets to her feet, her mouth full of salt water making her splutter for breath, and her arms flailing and splashing as her wet clothes weigh her down. As she lifts her head, she sees that he’s retracing his steps, cleaving back through the waves.

‘Where are you?’ he shouts in an accented voice. ‘Make noise, I must hear you.’

She splashes and shouts back. ‘Hurry, for God’s sake.’

He turns towards her, and it’s only then that she realises his eyes are fixed unseeingly in her direction. He is blind. She shouts some more, splashing as hard as she can, and all the while edging back closer to the shore to bring him in a little safer. He eventually reaches her, his arms out to grasp her and she grabs on to him, putting her arm around his waist, holding him tightly.

‘Are you okay?’ He pats the top of her head.

‘Yes, thank you. Oh, thank you.’ Her teeth are chattering so much with cold and shock that she can hardly put the words together. They stand there, his body anchoring hers against the swell of the sea, the waves flurrying against them.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asks, raising her voice against the roar of the tide.

‘What do you think it looks like?’ he says.

She can’t place his accent. Not quite German, though certainly European. Questions teem through her. What’s he doing in southern Cork? How did he manage to find his way to this cove? It’s a little off the beaten track, a quiet spot outside Kinsale.

‘You were foolish to walk out so far,’ she says. ‘There’s a dangerous current out there.’

‘That’s what I wanted. To be sucked away by the tide.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

The difference between the tall, vital-looking young man with the sensitive, clever face and wavy blond hair standing beside her, and the ice-cold reality of the lifeless image he puts in her head, clutches at her chest. What has driven him to this? She has dark hours herself – empty days when she struggles to keep a smile on her face, so that no one knows that she’s crying inside, not even her husband, and the long nights when she chokes back oceans of tears – but she has never considered ending it all. How could she? She has seen how implacable death looks and has tasted the cruel finality it brings.

‘How do you know what I want?’ he says. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know anything at all about me.’

There is something in his taut face that strikes a chord in her heart. ‘You’re right,’ she says, ‘I don’t. But thanks for helping me.’ She hooks her fingers into the loop of his jeans, linking him to her, hoping it might stop him from heading back towards the tide.

‘You were the foolish one to come after me,’ he says.

‘I was trying to save you,’ she says. ‘Instead you rescued me.’

She tilts her face and looks up at him in time to see him shaking his head. ‘You left me with no choice,’ he says. ‘I would have kept going but for you, and it would have been over by now. So you’re to blame that I’m still here.’

‘Good,’ she says. ‘I think everyone’s life is precious. And because you came back to help me, you must think that too.’

There is a silence filled only with the clamour of the sea, the slap of the waves and the cry of the gulls.

‘We can’t stand here forever,’ she says, clutching his arm. ‘Come on. We have to get out of this cold sea.’

‘No,’ he says, the angles on his face tightening further. ‘I shouldn’t be here now. You should have left me alone.’

‘Aren’t you the lucky one that I did come along?’ she says, trying a different tack with him, hiding the fear gnawing at her insides. ‘Come back for my sake – or I’ll follow you again.’

‘There’s nothing to go back to,’ he says.

‘Of course there is. How can you say that?’ It is on the tip of her tongue to ask him to look around. There is something soothing in the haziness of the approaching evening, the slow wheel of the gulls floating overhead against a striated, pink-grey sky, the symmetry of the fluttering birds that skim the surface of the sea so low their shadows flash across the surface of the puckered grey silk. She realises how futile her words would be. He is locked into a dark world in every sense. She stands there, trembling with cold and the shock of it all, gulping for breath, holding fast to him as cold water swirls around them. She tries to think.

‘Luis? You are Luis, aren’t you?’

He nods.

‘Maybe I’m saying all the wrong things, I’m useless in these situations,’ she says. She’s had moments of drama in her life, especially recently, but nothing like this. ‘I can’t imagine how desperate you must feel right now,’ she says, as gently as possible despite her chattering teeth.

‘Don’t dare tell me how I feel.’

‘Okay. But, look, things change, feelings come and go. We all have dark moments but if you wait, they will pass.’

‘What if they don’t pass?’

‘They do. Everything changes. Nothing ever stays the same. There’s always something to hope for if you look for it, something to live for, no matter how small.’

She was finding that out for herself, wasn’t she? No matter how bad she thinks things are, or how many of her hopes and dreams are soured, there is always a little voice inside her head that whispers to her to hang on in there, that her life will turn around. Each day, she makes sure to find something small that makes her smile, something to sustain her and smooth her frazzled heart, even if it’s just the sight of the last summer rose. Each evening, she sits in the sand dunes, soaking up the beauty of the landscape, the music that floats out across the air an added blessing.

‘No, there isn’t.’

‘Have you nothing at all to go back to? Who would miss you if you were gone?’ She looks around, across to the headlands and back to the sheltered cove, desperate to find someone who might be able to help, but there’s no one about and it’s all very quiet, which is the main reason she’s here. She thinks of the things that get her through the dark of the night, but they might not work for Luis; after all, she doesn’t know what demons he’s running from.

‘Even if you’ve nobody at all in the world, don’t you ever want to feel the sun on your face again or the wind in your hair?’ she says. ‘Or taste a salty breeze, a juicy fat strawberry … or woman’s kiss? Or smell a flower or freshly cut grass?’

Then he says something that surprises her. ‘You have a nice voice.’

‘Have I?’ She’s still so overcome by the magnitude of how close he came to ending it all that she’s shocked he has noticed her voice.

‘Yes, it’s soft and Irish. Except when you’re yelling at me.’

‘I am Irish, from Cork. And I yelled at you because I’m freezing cold and very cross with you. It’s lovely here, it’s beautiful, yet you want to do something that would hurt other people.’

‘Go slowly. You speak too fast.’

He wants her to speak. He hasn’t shrugged off her arm or plunged back towards the rip tide. She hopes he’s finding a crumb of comfort in the touch of her arm, as well as the sound of her voice, even if she’s saying all the wrong things.

‘What will I talk about?’

‘Tell me … tell me what it looks like. The sea. Tell me so I can picture it.’

‘It’s very beautiful,’ she says, knowing instinctively not to patronise him by diminishing the spectacular landscape just because he can’t see it. She begins to describe it: the colours, the immensity of it all, the way the streaky sky is reflected in the crumpled water, the circling gulls and rush of birds skimming the surface of the sea. He is still while she talks, and she imagines him picturing it in his mind.

There is a silence when she’s finished, and then, ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘You make it sound … very lovely.’

‘It is. I come here every evening, to sit in the sand dunes and listen to the music.’

He turns his face towards her, suddenly attentive. ‘What music?’

‘The piano music.’ Her voice is shaking with the cold. She can hardly form the words, but she is aware that he is listening to her closely. ‘It comes from one of the houses up on the headland. It’s beautiful. As beautiful as the sea and the sky,’ she gabbles. ‘It makes me feel full of hope. You should listen to it, Luis. It would make you feel good.’

He is silent for a moment. Then he says, ‘You’re freezing.’

‘What have I been trying to tell you? I’m also soaking. So are you. Can we go back now? Please, Luis?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘My name?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. You know my name, so why shouldn’t I know yours?’

‘It’s …’ She hesitates. As you said, I don’t know much about you and I’d prefer if you didn’t know anything at all about me. She takes a quick breath. ‘If you really must know, it’s Sylvie.’

‘What a lovely name. You should be proud of it and not hiding it away. Tell me more about this music, Sylvie, and how it makes you feel.’

She talks as cheerfully as she can, despite her chattering teeth and saturated clothes. She tells him how it sounds, how it helps her to feel happy and full of joy. To her relief, he comes with her as she begins to wade in the direction of the beach, but she still clings to him, terrified he might change his mind.

She’d love to tell him the truth and loosen the ache in her chest. But she puts on the mask of a happy, smiling face, even if he can’t see it. She can’t tell him that the music floods into the sore corners of her heart like lifesaving water into a parched desert, it helps her forget for a while all the troubled moments that disturb her sleep and, most of all, it stops her from feeling afraid at the dark turn her life has taken.

As she stared down at the tiny sleeping face of Lucy, her new little god-daughter, Carrie Cassidy was amazed how peaceful it was to simply sit and cuddle a tiny baby. In the same way that she could just be herself in the safe confines of her home on Faith Crescent, and didn’t have to answer to anyone, tiny babies didn’t expect you to be clever or funny or explain yourself in any way. They put their complete trust in you and all you had to do was sit and cuddle them, and feel the warm weight of the infant in your arms and stroke the unbearably soft skin of their face. They didn’t know that you felt all washed up at thirty years of age.

‘You look like you’re getting your hand in practice,’ a voice shattered her fragile calm.

Carrie’s grip on her new god-daughter tightened. The baby’s tiny hand opened on reflex, silky, matchstick fingers unfurling in the shape of a five-pointed star. Carrie looked up, just in time to see her Aunt Evelyn’s face cloud with anxiety.

Evelyn Sullivan fidgeted with the string of pearls around her neck. She looked very stylish in a taffeta aquamarine dress that Carrie had sourced for her at Jade, the high-end, luxury clothing company that Carrie worked for.

‘Sorry, Carrie,’ she said, ‘I forgot for a moment … me and my big mouth …’

‘It’s okay.’ Carrie shrugged and forced a smile.

Her aunt leaned in a little closer in a conspiratorial way and touched her lightly on the arm. ‘How have you been? Really, I mean, since Mark?’

The hotel room stilled around Carrie as his name slammed into her head, bringing an avalanche of images that made her ache all over. Carrie’s heart lurched as her aunt sat down on a vacant chair beside her and turned a kind, attentive face to her. How had she been? There was no way to put into words the blank reality she was living through every day, going in and out to her job in a kind of vacuum. Sometimes she felt dizzy, when the ground beneath her seemed to sway, whether it was the lunch-hour, city-centre streets or the carpeted office floor. The only thing that seemed solid and purposeful to her right now was the reality of the warm bundle resting with supreme trust in her arms. Even if she could articulate how she felt, here and now on this April afternoon was the wrong time and place to try. The Sullivan clan were gathered en masse in a Dublin south city hotel to welcome Lucy, Evelyn Sullivan’s new grandchild, into the world and celebrate her christening.

‘I’ve been okay,’ she lied, clutching Lucy to her as though she was a warm, comforting pillow. ‘I think I’ve had a narrow escape. I’m not cut out for marriage and babies.’

Her aunt smiled. ‘Don’t dismiss yourself, Carrie, you’d make a wonderful mother.’ Then she spoke hurriedly as if to temper her words in case they caused further upset. ‘But it would have to be with the right man. Marriage and parenthood is wonderful, but even with the most loving couples, there are times when all hell can break loose – so you need to be very sure of your man.’

‘I know,’ Carrie said. Funny that Evelyn had inadvertently put her finger on the heart of Carrie’s problem. Sure of her man? Equally so, the man would have to be very sure of his woman. Her aunt’s glance momentarily dropped to Carrie’s left, ringless hand. Carrie became aware again how painfully light her third finger felt without its diamond cluster. Like a phantom limb, sometimes she thought it was still there and checked for it with her thumb. Sometimes she forgot that it was buried in a black velvet box in the bottom of her bedside table.

‘What’s for you won’t pass you by. I’d like to think you’re happy, whatever you decide. I know it’s all your mother would have hoped for you … and your dad …’ Once again Evelyn’s voice trailed away. ‘Sometimes I wish … if only Sylvie was still here, and John, they’d be so proud of you. And there I go again with my big mouth.’

Carrie gave her aunt a quirky smile, the one she always used to hide her sadness behind when it came to her parents. ‘Hey, this is a good day for you and the family. We’re celebrating new life. You can’t change anything that has happened.’

‘No, none of us can – but I love you, Carrie. We all love you, you’re family and never forget you’re important to us all. You’re my daughter as much as Fiona. So don’t ever feel you’re on your own.’

Carrie grinned. ‘How could I feel alone with this gang keeping me firmly in my place?’ She looked beyond her aunt to the lively gathering in the room, the white and pink balloons drifting in the perfume-laden air, the tables scattered with wine glasses and remains of dessert after their meal. She was in the bosom of her extended family. Uncles, aunts, cousins. She was lucky to be related to this noisy, loveable gang, taking them for granted sometimes, letting them annoy her other times, even if she was a little on the edge of them all.

The Sullivans.

The name alone was a force to be reckoned with. Jack Sullivan, her Cork-born grandfather, had set up his construction supply empire in the 1960s, now managed by his two sons, Sean and Andrew. Along with their wives, Evelyn and Clare, they had settled down on lands adjacent to Willow Hill, the large, rambling house that was home to the Sullivan family in Cork, and between them had produced seven children in less than ten years, Carrie’s lively, boisterous cousins. Carrie was the only child of Jack Sullivan’s precious daughter, Sylvie, who had settled in Dublin with her husband, John Cassidy. She might have been reared in leafy Dublin suburbs, but Carrie had spent many a childhood holiday running free in the fields around her cherished grandmother’s big, rambling home, surrounded by her gang of noisy cousins. Her grandparents had died when Carrie was a teenager, and her cousins were now scattered between Cork, Dublin, London and America, but the family unit was still as close-knit as ever and they had all come together to celebrate baby Lucy’s christening.

‘Here’s Fiona now,’ Evelyn said, as her daughter crossed the room towards them.

Carrie watched Fiona weaving through the jumble of young children, and couldn’t help admiring the glow of new motherhood that lit up her cousin’s face like a beacon. She, too, was dressed in an outfit from Jade, a blush pink swirling dress that Carrie had suggested. She saw Fiona pass an involuntary hand across her stomach, as if self-conscious that it hadn’t yet returned to its trim, pre-baby shape, and Carrie wanted to hug her and berate her and tell her she was more beautiful than ever.

‘How’s my little sweetheart?’ Fiona asked, stroking Lucy’s tiny cheek.

‘She’s great,’ Carrie said. ‘I could sit here all day with her.’

‘Now that’s an offer!’ Fiona laughed.

‘I’ll leave you pair to discuss babysitting duties,’ Evelyn laughed as she got to her feet.

Fiona perched on the edge of Carrie’s armchair. ‘Thanks for being Lucy’s godmother,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

‘Nonsense. It was an honour,’ Carrie said. ‘And I fully expected you’d ask me, I was your chief bridesmaid after all.’

She fell silent for a moment, trying to push away the memory of Sam and Fiona’s wedding. It had been the first time she’d seen Mark, coming face to face with him as she’d reached the altar ahead of Fiona, finding out later that the tall, lean groomsman with the jet-black hair and light-grey eyes fringed with thick, dark lashes was a good friend of Sam’s, home from Singapore and back working in Dublin.

Finding out all sorts of other, even more delicious things later again …

Carrie blinked.

‘What I meant,’ Fiona said gently, ‘was that I appreciate how good-humoured you’ve been today, considering everything.’

There was no need to be ultra-brave in front of Fiona. Carrie gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Yes, well, today was special, and I love my little god-daughter to bits, she’s so beautiful. And so perfect and relaxed, so that you can help feeling relaxed with her.’

Together they stared down at the sleeping baby. ‘Besides,’ Carrie grinned, ‘do you think any of my Sullivan cousins would let me get away with wearing a self-pitying mask?’

‘Nope,’ Fiona grinned back. ‘It would soon be wiped off your face by my brothers for starters.’

A year older than Carrie, Fiona had three younger brothers, and she regarded Carrie as the next best thing to a sister. During those long, childhood holidays in Cork, they’d staunchly supported each other against the combined might of the Sullivan boys. Their deep friendship had continued into adulthood and during the years that Carrie had stumbled through life in the aftermath of her parents’ death, Fiona had always been there for her.

‘We have to be out of the room by seven o’clock,’ Fiona went on. ‘Sam and I will be going straight home with Lucy, but I think some of the gang are heading to the bar for a few drinks if you’re interested.’

‘I’ll see.’

Sam and I. Carrie noticed the way the words were dropped into the conversation casually and unthinkingly by Fiona. It was something she took for granted, that she and Sam were a double act, a unit all to themselves, enriched now by the arrival of baby Lucy. Carrie was beginning to think she’d never be the other half of a couple.

‘I’m going to take this little pet off you now,’ Fiona said, reaching for the baby. ‘She needs a feed and a change.’

Carrie held up the baby and Fiona scooped Lucy out of her arms, leaving a cold, empty spot where the soft, trusting warmth of her had nestled. A feeling of being bereft swept over Carrie and, in an effort to fill the vacuum, she took her mobile out of her bag, logged on to Twitter and tweeted about the wonderful family day she was enjoying. At least she’d had no fear of Mark stalking her on Twitter or any social media site after their breakup. Even though he worked for Bizz, a global internet company, he’d always been adamant that he’d never regurgitate the minutiae of his daily life for anyone else’s vicarious consumption.

She heard Mark’s amused voice as though he was sitting on the sofa beside her. ‘You’re addicted to that stuff. I trust you’re not putting out anything about us.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she’d teased. ‘Our sex life has gone viral. It’s so hot I’m making everyone else jealous and upsetting all my followers.’

‘I can’t abide all that social media crap,’ he’d said, reaching for her and taking her mobile out of her fingers, putting it out of her reach before gathering her in his arms. ‘But I like what you said about the hot sex life.’

In an unguarded moment, she’d been tempted to confide that she’d found social media a very convenient way of connecting with the world at a basic level after her parents’ death. Even if it was just silly comments about television, or opening a bottle of good wine, responses to her tweets had been a connection of sorts, a kind of lifeline, making her feel less alone. And it had been easy to pretend to be happy-go-lucky Carrie behind the anonymity of a Twitter feed, even if she felt blank and empty and had strange, dark circles under her eyes when she looked in the mirror. But she’d let the moment pass and instead of confiding in him, she’d closed her eyes and kissed him back, folding her body tightly into his.

Later, she watched Fiona and Sam laughing together as they gathered up all the baby paraphernalia, the gift bags and christening cards, and took them out to the car. They returned to say their goodbyes, then Sam lifted the tiny, sleeping Lucy, secure in her car seat, and with his other hand in the small of Fiona’s back, they left. Carrie felt curiously empty after they had gone and decided to join her cousins in the bar.

But that turned out to be not such a good idea after all. They’d all heard, of course, of her broken engagement. Fiona’s brothers were there, two of them with their girlfriends, along with more cousins, taking up a roomy booth in a corner of the bar. They smiled almost too brightly at her, before promptly moving around the banquette to make room, shifting coats and bags, taking her jacket and placing it carefully over the pile of coats. Shane, home from London for the weekend, went to the bar to order her a mojito, telling her she looked far too sober.

‘I am the godmother,’ she said.

‘All the more reason to let your hair down now. Godmothers are supposed to have all the fun and none of the work,’ he said, giving her a wink.

Later, Shane walked with her to a taxi. ‘He was awful careless not to hang on to you,’ he said to her quietly. ‘I thought Mark was a sound enough guy.’

‘He was,’ she said, the chilly spring breeze cold on her face after the heat of the hotel. ‘I didn’t give him much of a choice, though. It was my decision to call it all off.’

‘We all want a happy ever after for you, Carrie,’ he said, ‘whatever that might be. After everything you’ve been through you deserve it.’

‘Thanks, Shane,’ she said, getting into the taxi.

The Sullivans were the only people in the world who got away with talking to her like that. Anyone else who demonstrated the slight degree of sympathy towards her was treated to Carrie’s merciless glare and a toss of her dark, wavy hair.

As the taxi swung out of the car park towards the south city, she thought of the empty house ahead of her. It would be exactly as she’d left it that morning, cold and silent, undisturbed. There would be no Mark to share a nightcap with, never mind a laugh and a joke, or to look at the photographs she had taken on her mobile of Lucy. No Mark to say Carrie was beautiful as he peeled off her cream silk dress and matching jacket, or to free her hair, which was caught to one side and clasped in a glittering Swarovski slide so that it cascaded in a dark, glossy wave over her left shoulder. No Mark to cuddle up to in bed or wrap her long legs around or make long, slow and very satisfying love to … to have a friendly, sleepy tiff with over who’d cook brunch the next day, and go out for fresh milk and crusty bread and the Sunday papers. It was amazing how the daily incidentals of a life you shared with someone else could be taken for granted, and how keenly they could be missed.

Carrie’s house was tucked into the middle of a semi-circular cul de sac of terraced houses. ‘Bijou’ is how the auctioneer had described it. This had translated as cramped, but the minute Carrie had walked into it, she knew the house was for her – even if her bookcase had to be squeezed into the hall and the cloakroom was a cubbyhole under the stairs. The sturdy, red-bricked walls seemed to wrap around her, holding her safely in their embrace. The house backed onto the grounds of a big, hundred-year-old church, which could be seen rising up above the six-foot-high wall that ran across the end of her back ga