The Long Weekend

by Gilly Macmillan

Genres: Mystery; Historical Thrillers; General Fiction

Synopsis

“Twisty, dark, and packs a punch. . . . Gripping and genuinely nail-biting.” — Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium

In this pulse-pounding thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Nanny, a group of women travel to the most remote place in England for a weekend escape, only to discover a startling note that one of their husbands will be killed before they return home. Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.

Three couples

Two bodies

One secret

Dark Fell Barn is a “perfectly isolated” retreat, or so says its website when Jayne books a reservation for her friends. A quiet place, far removed from the rest of the world, is exactly what they need.

The women arrive for a girls’ night ahead of their husbands. There’s ex-Army Jayne, hardened and serious, but also damaged. Ruth, the driven doctor and new mother who is battling demons of her own. Young Emily, just wed and insecure, the newest addition of this tight-knit band. Missing this year is Edie, who was the glue holding them together, until her husband died suddenly.

But what they hoped would be a relaxing break soon turns to horror. Upon arrival at Dark Fell Barn, the women find a devastating note claiming one of their husbands will be murdered. There are no phones, no cell service to check on their men. Friendships fracture as the situation spins wildly out of control. Betrayal can come in many forms.

This group has kept each other’s secrets for far too long.

"Fast-paced and incredibly compelling . . . this book will not let you put it down." — Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Release date: March 29, 2022

Publisher: William Morrow

Print pages: 400

Sample

John shouldn’t be driving

John shouldn’t be driving, they discussed it with the doctor yesterday, but Maggie sees the look in his eyes and puts the key into his outstretched hand. His fingers snap closed around it.

He gets into the Land Rover without loading the bags of clean linen and towels into the back, but Maggie doesn’t say anything; she hefts them in herself. The dog jumps in and lies down, bracing her back against the bags, tongue out, gaze taut. Maggie shuts the door.

The wind is cold this morning and cuts right through her. It’s only the start of September yet autumn has arrived abruptly. There’s the feeling of a storm coming. Clouds race to gather on the horizon, their shadows grazing the solid stone-and-slate farmhouse below where it’s nestled in a hollow in the side of the valley.

John starts the Land Rover and over its growl, Maggie thinks she hears the whine of another engine. She frowns. Their guests aren’t due to arrive until later this afternoon. The lane that winds up here doesn’t lead anywhere else. If you’re on it, you’re either on your way to the Elliott farm or you’re lost.

Drystone walls divide and organize the land around the farmhouse. Acres of unenclosed rough grazing surround it, steep, harsh terrain, only semi-useful. Beyond lies an unmanageable wilderness of exposed moor concealing boggy wetlands and cleft by isolated valleys and sheer-edged ravines, slippery with scree. Rocky outcrops disrupt the summits of distant peaks.

The boundaries of the farm are ill-defined. Elliott land encompasses some of this wilderness and has done for centuries. John and Maggie shepherd three thousand acres and eight hundred head of sheep. There’s good grass and bad; there are good years and bad. The sky is always huge and the stars at night brighter than anywhere else they’ve ever been. Guests who stay at the barn always remark on this.

Maggie waits for a moment, to see if she hears more, but picks up nothing over the noise of the Land Rover. She doesn’t linger. Up here, sound can play tricks on you. And she has work to do.

She fastens her seat belt. “I thought I heard someone driving up.”

John doesn’t react. His foot is down, the Land Rover moving already. She glances at him.

“Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He maneuvers the car out of the farm gate. It bounces as the wheels hit the potholed surface of the lane.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Sorry.”

He stares ahead and she watches his profile. His cheeks and nose are riddled with broken veins, his skin knitted thick onto his bones. He’s done a shoddy job shaving today, but his eyes are as full of soul as ever. This is a good man. She knew it the day she met him.

She looks harder at him, searching for outward signs of what’s invisible: the areas of his brain riddled with connections as broken as his veins. “We suspect dementia with Lewy bodies. I’m so sorry,” the consultant said. That appointment lost in a sea of others by now, but she’ll always remember hearing the diagnosis and that apology, and John flinching as if he’d been struck.

She’s so lost in staring at him that she doesn’t see the motorbike round the bend in the lane, tilting, black, and powerful. Coming right at them. Too fast.

John hits the brakes hard, bracing himself at the last instant. Maggie is thrown forward and back, the air punched out of her lungs.

“Sorry,” he says in the shocked silence afterward. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. You?” Her heart thumps and she winces at the sudden arrival of pain where the seat belt cut into her chest and her shoulder.

“Hurt?” he asks.

“It’s not too bad.”

John nods and looks behind to check on the dog. She shows him the whites of her eyes but seems fine, only a towel fallen onto her from one of the overstuffed bags.

“Good, Birdie,” he tells her.

The bike has skidded to a stop at an angle across the lane, frighteningly close to the front of the Land Rover. The biker’s a big man, dressed in plain black leathers and a black helmet. Even with his helmet on, they know he’s not one of their local couriers.

He dismounts. The surface of his visor reflects the dark trees gathered on each side of the lane. Maggie is suddenly afraid that he might be angry with them and try to blame them for the close shave. They’d be defenseless against a man like him. She’s breathing hard.

John winds down the window. “You need to watch where you’re going,” he shouts. A vein pulses in his temple.

“Don’t,” Maggie warns. She used to feel safe from everything except the elements up here. She loved the isolation and the sense of living on the very edge of civilization. But the change they’ve been through since John’s diagnosis is like today’s stiff wind. It has rattled everything, and Maggie is afraid that she and John have reached a stage in life where once something’s rattled, it stays loose.

Birdie growls and gets to her feet. Her head pokes between their shoulders. She shows her teeth.

“Birdie!” Maggie puts a hand on the dog’s shoulder. The growling stops but Birdie’s muscles are tense, her hackles are up, and she doesn’t take her eyes off the biker.

He lifts his visor as he moves nearer to the driver’s side of the Land Rover. His mouth is obscured by a bandanna and his eyes are buried in shadow. “I’m looking for the Elliotts.” His accent is southern. He’s come a long way north to be within a stone’s throw of the Scottish border.

“That’s us,” John says.

“I’ve got a package for you.”

“Parcels get left in the box by the farm gate. At the bottom of the hill.”

“I’m supposed to give it to you in person. Special instructions.”

They watch him fetch the package from the back of his bike, his movements unhurried. He hands a cardboard box to John, who passes it to Maggie. It’s unsealed, unmarked, and has some weight to it. Maggie opens the flaps to peer inside and sees another box, this one cuboid and beautifully wrapped in paper and ribbon. An envelope is tucked beside it. Maggie takes it out and retrieves her glasses from her shirt pocket so she can read the small, carefully printed words. “TO JAYNE, RUTH, AND EMILY.”

“This isn’t for us,” she says but as she speaks, she remembers. “The guest who booked the barn this weekend is called Jayne. It must be for her. For them.”

“There’s a note for you, too.” The driver hands over a sheet of paper with typed instructions on it. Maggie reads aloud.

“‘Please discard the cardboard box and place the wrapped present prominently on the kitchen table at Dark Fell Barn, facing the door, and lean the letter against it so it’ll be the first thing my friends see when they enter the room on arrival. It’s a very special surprise so I appreciate your attention to detail. Thank you.’”

It’s not signed. Maggie flips it but there’s nothing on the back.

“Aye, I suppose that’s fine,” she says. Her tension ebbs. Sometimes guests do the strangest things. “We’re on our way up to the barn now.” She still feels a little uneasy but also embarrassed for feeling so fearful earlier.

The biker nods. He closes his visor and is away as suddenly as he arrived, the bike spraying mud in its wake, leaving questions on Maggie’s lips, such as who and where he picked the box up from, and why all the effort to get it here in this way. Not her business, she supposes, but she’s curious about this “special surprise” and its “special instructions.”

“That’s a first,” she says. “How far do you think he came from?”

“We could have killed him.”

John speaks through gritted teeth. He’s angry because the near miss frightened him, Maggie thinks, and she wonders if she should take over the driving, after all, if he’s going to get himself in a state. She’s about to ask, but the words stick in her mouth. Every offer she makes to help him wounds his dignity and it hurts her to inflict pain on him.

Instead, she lifts the parcel and gives it a tentative shake. “The lengths people will go to,” she says. “I hope whatever’s in here is worth the bother.”

John glances over, shakes his head, and mutters something she can’t hear as he fixes his eyes back on the road. She notices him tighten his grip on the wheel, knuckles whitening beneath his thinning skin.

Those hands, she thinks, aware that since his diagnosis she’s been prone to moments of reflection and of nostalgia, but allowing herself the indulgence. What those hands have built and achieved. She loves the liver spots, the tendons like thick string, sees the happy years of her marriage and the challenges of their farming life in them.

But the tight grip on the wheel, the head shaking and the muttering; it’s not him. It’s more change that’s new and troubling. She’s still learning to read his symptoms, and to decipher what they might mean, and she gets a sinking feeling that today might be one of those days where he’s lost to a terrible pessimism.

“What are you shaking your head for?”

“It’s a bad thing. The parcel is.”

“What gives you that idea? How can you possibly know?”

He inclines his head. He knows, he’s saying. She tries to laugh it off, but the sound coming out of her mouth is hollow, and the truth is, she finds herself taking him semi-seriously. John might drown in pessimism or despair, he might exhibit agitation, forgetfulness, and sometimes she thinks he even sees things that aren’t there, all of which is deeply troubling, but she can’t deny that for as long as she’s known him, he’s been able to sense more than the average person.

She touches the back of her neck, seeking any soreness from whiplash. Her cold fingertips trigger a shudder that runs right through her. She thinks about the parcel, about whether it’s a good or a bad thing. After a few silent moments she puts it in the footwell.

The Land Rover lurches and bumps as it climbs the rutted track. Maggie steadies the parcel with her foot when the vehicle’s movement threatens to damage it. If whatever is inside it gets broken, her guests may leave a bad review, and that’s the last thing she and John can afford.

 

 

I wrote the letter and wrapped the package, taking my time over it, to make sure it looked beautiful. I thought carefully about the instructions for the owners of Dark Fell Barn. And I arranged the delivery meticulously so that it couldn’t be traced back to me.

And now I’ve just received confirmation on my burner phone that both letter and package have been handed over, along with my instructions.

Phew.

It really is a great feeling, mostly comprised of relief, but satisfaction, too, because I take pleasure in planning. You might, I suppose, call me a control freak.

What happens next is out of my hands, though, and my nerves are jangling at the thought. Directing a piece of theater long distance isn’t easy.

I have to hope the Elliotts do as I’ve asked, putting the props precisely in place so that the curtain can rise on Act 1.

 

Outside the car, rows of trees crowd the edges of the narrow road, densely packed, trunks straight and foliage overhanging low, absorbing the dying afternoon light. Emily takes out one of her earbuds. “It looks like a fairy tale,” she says.

She clears the hours of silence from her throat, tugs the sleeves of her sweater over her wrists, and wraps her arms tightly around herself. She should ask Jayne or Ruth to turn up the heat, but she’s too shy. They intimidate her with their closeness and the decade they have on her. Emily feels like an imposter.

Jayne, in the driver’s seat, raises her eyebrows. Finally! Emily speaks! she thinks. Emily has been either asleep or plugged in for most of the journey.

“Like a fairy tale in a good way?” Ruth asks, turning round. Emily is a mystery to Ruth and someone Ruth is determined to get to know better over the course of this weekend.

“Not really,” Emily says. The fairy tales that were read to her as a child were terrifying.

Ruth isn’t sure how to respond. Emily’s relative youth sometimes leaves Ruth at a loss for words. It shouldn’t, she knows, but somehow, the ten-year age gap is always there between them, making Ruth afraid that whatever she says will sound patronizing, even though that’s the last thing she means to be. She faces the front again and consults the sat nav.

“Not long until we’re out of the woods,” she says. “Literally. And around fifty minutes until we get there, according to this.”

They’ve been on the road for hours, heading north. Muscles are stiff, minds dull. Ruth insisted on packing lunch for them all, lackluster sandwiches which she apparently made at the crack of dawn. It adds to the school trip feel of the journey for Emily.

As the car breaks out of the forest, light floods the windscreen, and the landscape reveals itself. Jayne smiles for the first time since she woke this morning with Mark’s hand on her flank. She thought at first that he wanted to make love, but it was a more careful touch, an apology. Phone in his other hand, Mark was waking her with the news that he wouldn’t be able to join them on the drive up north today, meaning he would miss the first of their planned three nights away.

Jayne was cross. The news bruised her and so did the row they had over it. They bickered clumsily, both tired and both upset with how the other was taking it, both feeling like the injured party.

But Jayne’s sense of well-being has grown with every mile they’ve traveled north, the banality of the motorway soothing her, happy anticipation of the long weekend ahead reemerging, reframed.

Now the weekend will consist of a girls’ night followed by two nights when all six of them will be together. It’s not what she expected but it’s fine, and she will still be able to surprise Mark, the way she planned to. And as Mark pointed out, perhaps she needs to work on handling change better. And she will. There are always improvements to be made in life and she’s not afraid of putting in the graft.

She focuses on the positives. She’s been looking forward to this weekend for weeks. She needs a break. And it feels as if she’s hardly seen Ruth since Ruth had the baby. It’ll be nice to have time to catch up properly. That’s sometimes easier when the men aren’t with them, dominating the conversation with their in-jokes and reminiscences.

Alone in the back of the car, Emily has fallen quiet again. She blows on the window glass and traces her initials and Paul’s there, with a heart around them. Her nails are manicured and painted a pretty pale blue; the back of her hands tanned. A large emerald on her ring finger is a match for her eyes. Paul held it up beside them when he proposed, comparing the green of the jewel to that of her irises. The smile on his face was so broad and unfiltered that it touched her. He looked like the cat who’d got the cream, which is exactly how she felt.

The idea of being a wife is still thrilling to Emily. She never expected to be married at this age, only twenty-three, especially to a much older husband, but she fell in love, tumbled into it, and so far, it’s been amazing. She adores Paul and adores their life together. And as a bonus she gets to flash that big rock at the doubters, including her mother, who never managed to get a ring on her own finger. After Emily’s dad left them, her mum mostly collected toxic boyfriends, nasty bruises, and a deepening alcohol addiction.

Emily’s breath evaporates from the window, taking the initials and heart with it and the magical memories. Outside the countryside crawls by. Walls and gates, fields and hills. Many black-headed sheep. A horse, waiting for something. So much emptiness. Dull.

Ruth and Jayne are talking about a play that’s on the radio. The play and the conversation sound pretentious and worthy, confirming Emily’s impression that the two of them are boring. Though while she’s got no desire to join in their chat, she wishes that she’d accepted Ruth’s offer to take the passenger seat for the journey. Sitting in back makes her feel even more like a kid.

She wants Jayne to put her foot down and get them to the cottage quicker because she’s fed up with the drive, but the white lines have disappeared from the center of the road and it seems to be constantly narrowing and forcing the car to decelerate. It’s as if the road is taking control.

She puts her earbuds back in and shuts her eyes, thinking of the holiday in the south of France that she and Paul have just returned from. The business-class flights, the hotel, the spa, the sex. It was lush. Paul is perfect. He was a gentleman. She felt like a princess, even when the air hostess gave her that knowing face, as if to say, you’re not the only young thing I’ve seen in this cabin beside an older man, and you won’t be the last. Emily took pleasure in flashing her ring, then.

Marriage isn’t all fun, though. She’s annoyed with Paul today. She wishes he was here with her. If she’s honest it’s more than annoyance. She resents him for insisting he had to work today and for making her come on this long weekend ahead of him, with these other women, whom she barely knows.

“Come on, Em,” he said. “It’s just one night. Make the effort. It’s really important to me that you try to get to know my friends.” Emotional blackmail.

She’s been happy to avoid these women until now, shying away from group nights out or Sunday lunches, feeling acutely that she has nothing in common with them. But there it hung, the implication that Paul would be disappointed in her if she didn’t do what he wanted. So, she agreed. And now she wishes she hadn’t. Especially since the other husbands aren’t here either. Mark and Toby are more fun than their wives, but they couldn’t come either, also at the last minute, so now she faces twenty-four hours in the draining company of Jayne and Ruth. Already, Ruth has been fussy and patronizing, and Jayne has stared at Emily in that penetrating way that makes her feel vacuous and stupid.

She sighs and once again her breath mists the window. She draws another heart. But this time she’s too annoyed with Paul to put their initials inside it.

 

John’s impulse is to take the package back to the farmhouse, to toss it in the dustbin, and to say good riddance to it. He’d like to toss the guests away with it, if such a thing was possible.

This bloody special delivery is yet another display of ridiculousness and arrogance from the people who come up here to stay in the barn, he thinks. They only want to party and to play. They’re totally disconnected from the land that his family have been custodians of for more than a century.

With every set of guests to arrive at Dark Fell Barn over the past year—since Maggie made a website and began to advertise it—John’s unhappiness with the situation has burgeoned along with his sense that something sacred to his family is being invaded. He restored the barn himself, to preserve it for the use of William, his son, and for the generations of Elliotts he hopes will follow.

Hardly a day passes when John doesn’t think of the people who walked his land before him, and of how you should learn from the past, how we are all rooted to it.

The past contains warnings, he believes. You must respect it. In this part of the world, deepest Northumbria, the past is bloody and suffused with myth and history. The rugged beauty might photograph well, but it’s no playground.

He wants to tell Maggie once again that the barn should not be rented out, to press his case urgently, but she’s heard it before, and he can’t stand to see any more sympathy in her eyes. She’ll understand how he feels but she’ll only say, “We can’t vet people before they arrive here,” and “We need the money,” and she’s right so he keeps his mouth shut and concentrates on driving them safely up the track.

The journey up to the barn is difficult. It takes about twenty minutes and the steeper they climb, the more the Land Rover lurches and rolls. Finally, the track curves sharply and they emerge from woodland high in an isolated valley.

You can see for miles, but Dark Fell Barn is the only building in sight. In every direction, below racing clouds, shadow and light play chase across the limitless terrain. Perspective contracts and expands. Layers of detail are shrouded then revealed as conditions change. Colors are fickle, dulling one moment, intensifying the next. Textures look velvety and welcoming, before turning raw and pitiless.

John Elliott has spent his entire life here and loves it with his whole heart. He knows he’s losing his memory and knows that reality, for him, is now warped and no longer easily navigable, and that Maggie is his only anchor to it.

But he makes a daily vow to himself that he will never forget his purpose as custodian of this land.

 

Rain hits the car windscreen like a handful of pebbles. Ruth, in the passenger seat, flinches and looks behind to check on Emily. Maternal habits are hard to break, even if newly acquired. Ruth’s baby, Alfie, is only six months old and she feels practically rabid with protective hormones, but knows that she mustn’t treat Emily as a child substitute just because she’s so young.

That would be wrong in so many ways. They are three women of equal status, married to best buddies, and Ruth hopes that by the end of the weekend she’ll be able to count Emily as a new friend.

Ruth fires off another text to Toby asking if he’s arrived safely at his sister’s house. He hasn’t replied to any of her recent texts, but he should be there by now, playing the white knight. Like the other two husbands, he found a last-minute reason not to travel up to the barn today and Ruth isn’t happy about it. Long weekends away are a ritual for their gang and this year the talk has been that getting away is more important than ever, in the aftermath of Rob’s death.

So, what a time for Toby to prioritize a sister who never lifts a finger for him! When does he ever prioritize Ruth, his wife? Or, for that matter, their son?

She knows she probably shouldn’t send so many messages—more than ten in the last hour—but it drives her mad how bad Toby is at texting, especially at a time like this when he’ll know full well that she’ll be wanting reassurance.

It’s just not the sort of thing he cares about, though. His phone is an old model he refuses to upgrade. His head is always in his research and as a result he’s disorganized, overly reliant on Ruth to run their lives. She used to love that about him; it made her feel useful, as if she was an excellent supportive wife, and became another area of life that she could excel in. But since the baby it’s become overwhelming.

Alfie should be waking up from his afternoon nap about now. Since she left home this morning, she’s felt uneasy, unsure whether her mother will have the patience to look after Alfie the way Ruth would like her to.

Ruth stayed up late last night writing pages of notes on how to care for him, covering every eventuality she could think of, but her mother took them from her almost offhandedly and didn’t so much as glance at them. Ruth made her promise she would read them, but who knows if she will. Professor Flora MacNeill always knows best.

Ruth sighs and shifts position. She’s uncomfortable in body as well as in mind. The waistband of her jeans is digging into her. There’s a coffee stain on her cotton top. A quick check in the vanity mirror confirms that her mascara has migrated to stain her cheeks and it resists a tidy-up with a licked finger. She stops trying when the car jolts over a pothole and she almost stabs herself in the eye. She feels mumsy and frumpy by comparison to the other women. Emily is gorgeous, young and svelte. Jayne is whippet thin and super fit, her face bare of cosmetics. She radiates health and certainty.

Jayne turns off the wipers when they start to squeak. The rain has stopped. It was a passing squall, violent but moving swiftly. Nothing to get excited over.

“You okay?” Jayne asks, glancing at Ruth. “You’re frowning.” Jayne is dismayed by how tired and strung-out Ruth seems. Ruth hasn’t been as silent as Emily during this journey but has definitely not been her usual chatty self either. There are bags under her eyes and her skin has a pasty, plump look to it, as if Ruth hasn’t been taking care of herself in the past weeks since Jayne last saw her.

“I’m fine.” Ruth closes the mirror and tries to stretch, forcing her shoulders back, feeling the muscles resist. Jayne is a good friend. Never effusive or excitable but steady and kind. A safe pair of hands. Worth putting on a brave face for. “Looking forward to getting there.”

“Are you worried about leaving Alfie?”

Ruth’s grateful for the question, for Jayne’s thoughtfulness, though it won’t do to admit how deeply anxious she feels. It would be embarrassing in front of Emily. “A bit.”

“He’ll be fine.”

Ruth nods, but gratitude has turned to irritation because the comment smarts. People always give bland rejoinders like that when she verbalizes her worries about the baby. It’s almost a reflex, an automatic response. But what if her worries deserve more serious attention? A follow-up question perhaps? One displaying concern and consideration?

Ruth finds being a new mother the most intimate but also the loneliest of places. She wonders when she last felt she connected to her friends. It was before Alfie was born, certainly. A sense of loss comes with the realization that it’s probably almost a year since she got together with some of them.

Even being back at work at the surgery hasn’t helped her isolation; in fact it’s made it worse. Working full-time, which is necessary because she and Toby need the money, means she lost the mum friends she made during maternity leave because she could no longer make it to their coffee mornings or baby groups.

Her days are packed. She’s either commuting, dropping Alfie at nursery, or at work racing through her patient list and worrying about what she’s missing out on at home. There doesn’t ever seem to be time for casual chats with colleagues or after-work drinks with friends. Everything feels hurried. And she feels permanently inadequate, as if she’s not doing anything well.

She checks her phone. Her mother hasn’t replied to the last text she sent either, but to be fair cell reception is becoming patchy.

Anxiety feels like pressure that germinates in her chest and radiates into every part of her body.

Before she had Alfie, she was enthusiastic about motherhood. Wanted it, looked forward to it, prepared diligently for it, reading every book on babies that she could get her hands on, consulting recent medical research. No detail was too small for her to take seriously; nothing was going to catch her out.

This was how Ruth had always approached life, how she’d achieved her dream of becoming a doctor and how she’d tried to live up to her family’s expectations. Rigor. Attention to detail. Hard work.

She was astounded after Alfie’s birth to find out how useless all her planning was. Instead of having a sense of control, she felt feral and instinctual about motherhood the moment they placed her son on her tummy and everything she’d read suddenly became redundant. It was as if she’d undergone a personality change during his birth.

She became obsessed with the vulnerable flop of his damp head, the delicate folds of his skin, every single detail of him. In the last six months she’s experienced the most powerful feelings she’s ever felt in her life. Sometimes she thinks she could eat Alfie up for dinner and want more of him for dessert. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

Toby doesn’t feel as strongly about their son. It’s obvious and Ruth resents him for it. It’s driven a wedge between them.

For weeks, she’s been nurturing the hope that this weekend, their first break without the baby, can help them rediscover each other. She’s aching for him to touch her again. It’s been almost a year since they last made love. Toby stopped touching her a few months into her pregnancy. And she misses the intimacy terribly.

The urge to have a drink arrives abruptly and powerfully. Just a small drink. It would take the edge off her worries and help her to get in the mood to party with Jayne and Emily.

She started drinking surreptitiously after Alfie’s birth, during her maternity leave. At first it was a pick-me-up, but soon it was the only thing that held back the feeling that her life was spinning out of her control.

And it didn’t stop when she went back to work when Alfie was eight weeks old. Everything got worse. She found she barely had the attention span to listen to her patients properly and resented how much they both expected and took from her.

She knows she’s got to stop drinking. It’s causing problems. She thinks of the email she received yesterday from the other partners at her surgery and the formal warning it contained about her behavior. She hasn’t told Toby about it yet. Just the thought of it is overwhelming.

And the problem is, she doesn’t know how to stop drinking because increasingly, lately, she’s felt that it’s not just her life that’s out of control, but she herself, as if she’s slipped loose from the moorings that used to keep her stable. ...