Untitled Sheila O'Flanagan 2026

by Sheila O'Flanagan

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Coming in 2026: the extraordinary new contemporary novel, set in Ireland, Italy and France, from the bestselling author of The Honeymoon Affair and The Missing Wife.

Three women, each at a turning point in her life, are drawn together by old secrets and new dilemmas.

Ailie: newly widowed, after twenty tempestuous years with Giorgio. Her husband's family has never accepted her, or Giorgio's choice to live outside Italy. If it weren't for her daughter, she'd cut all ties. Building bridges might be the hardest thing Ailie has ever had to do.

Sybil: in the last five years she's found the confidence to be alone, but not lonely. Now her interfering younger sister Tansy is determined to set Sybil up with a new man. And maybe Tansy's right that it's time for Sybil to change something, if not her romantic status.

Rua: twenty years ago, she learned the hard way that it's a dangerous world for young women. Twice she's faced a crisis and twice she's had to rebuild her life. Now all she cares about is protecting her daughter from the pain she went through herself. But even the worst grief can heal . . .

In her unique, insightful life-affirming way, Sheila O'Flanagan weaves together the lives of these three remarkable women in an absolutely satisfying novel readers will never forget.

Release date: May 7, 2026

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 448

Sample

It was the unexpected splash of pink among the sombre blacks and greys that caught Ailie’s attention. An umbrella, she realised, carried by a tall, angular woman in a dark green raincoat, a matching leather bag over her shoulder. The woman’s silver-white hair was short and well cut, and she wore a pair of stylish tortoiseshell glasses that added to her aura of quiet determination. She walked with purpose, the umbrella shielding her from the persistent drizzle that had been falling since early morning. Ailie wondered if she was an ex-colleague of Giorgio’s, one of the few she hadn’t yet met.

Despite the misery of the day, she was unexpectedly cheered by the brightness of the pink umbrella and the subtle elegance of the confident woman. Her gaze remained fixed on her even as she walked past the group of mourners standing on the steps of the crematorium and followed the narrow path that led to the older part of the cemetery, where family plots were located beneath tall trees. It was a serene and peaceful setting, although some of the older graves were so neglected that the headstones were cracked and mossy, the people in them now forgotten.

Not a colleague, thought Ailie, as the woman disappeared out of sight. Nothing at all to do with today’s funeral. She closed her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

The man who’d walked up to her while she’d been following the progress of the woman with the pink umbrella reached out his hands and clasped hers within them. Ailie smiled and thanked him for coming. She recognised his face, although she couldn’t remember his name.

‘He was one of the good guys,’ the man said as he released his hold on her. ‘A real gent. It was a privilege to know him.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said, and thanked him again.

So many thank-yous. So many people telling her how great Giorgio was. What a shock his death had been. How much they’d miss him. But for how long would they miss him? she asked herself, thinking of the forgotten graves beneath the trees. A week? A month? A year? She doubted it would be that long. She was pretty sure his desk had already been reallocated. His card key deprogrammed. His work divided out between his colleagues. That was what happened in big business, after all. It would be his family who would never forget him: Marco and Flavia and Ailie herself. And those from Italy, who would hold him close in their hearts while happily wiping all memories of his marriage to her and pretending it had never happened.

Let them try, she thought.

‘Would you like to get in the car now?’ The undertaker asked the question, his tone professionally sympathetic.

Ailie nodded, and signalled to Marco and Flavia, who were standing side by side. They came over to her.

‘We’re leaving,’ she said.

Flavia nodded and got into the black Mercedes. Marco followed her. Ailie joined them. The car slowly pulled away, leaving behind the woman with the pink umbrella, and everyone else visiting their loved ones’ resting places on All Souls’ Day.

Ailie had reserved a space in Giorgio’s favourite gastropub for refreshments after his cremation. Those mourners who had arrived before her had already clustered into groups: Giorgio’s friends and colleagues, friends of Marco and Flavia, Ailie’s own friends and family. Although the Marchettis had arrived in the car behind her, they walked in ahead: his sisters, Sara and Mia, and his brother, Antonio. Not his mother, who was elderly and too infirm to travel. And not Chiara, the youngest of the siblings, who’d stayed behind to take care of Signora Marchetti at this time of sorrow. None of the husbands had come either, while Sophia, Giorgio’s glamorous ex-wife, had remained in Italy too, for which Ailie was profoundly relieved. She’d been very afraid that Sophia might turn up with Marco, and that would have been too much to bear.

She sighed at the complications of extended, blended families. She supposed hers was no more complicated than many others, but it always seemed to be on a knife edge of possible conflict. Mainly because of Sophia, still beloved by the Italians. And also because of Signora Marchetti, the ninety-year-old matriarch who ruled them all with a rod of iron. It was because Giorgio hadn’t wanted to be ruled that he’d left, even though, as he told her afterwards, it had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. And even though he constantly had to balance the life he’d made in Dublin with his family commitments in Trieste.

It was almost impossible to believe that their first meeting had been over twenty years ago. Ailie remembered how often she’d rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders as a teenager when her mother had said things like ‘it seems like only yesterday’ when talking about her own childhood. To Ailie, back then, it had been the Dark Ages. But now things that had happened years ago truly did seem as though they’d taken place in the recent past, no matter how crazy that was. Flavia, at eighteen, was living proof of how the years had flown by.

The memory of Giorgio’s first visit to the dental clinic where Ailie worked as an administrator was clear. He’d come to the desk and pointed to his broken front tooth – smashed, he said, when he was bundled into a goalpost during a five-a-side football match. He told her he was hoping for an appointment right away, because he had meetings with clients later in the week and he couldn’t possibly call on them looking the way he was now. Despite the broken tooth, he was a handsome man who carried himself with an innate sense of assurance and style. Ailie was surprised at the Italian name, given that his hair was a reddish-blonde that could have been pure Irish, and his eyes a luminous hazel, more green than grey. She told him that he was lucky, because the dentist had a cancellation and would be able to see him shortly, although it would take time to have a crown made for the tooth, so there was no chance of him having a perfect smile by the end of the week.

He was still sitting in the waiting room when she went for lunch at the café across the plaza. She was tucking into peach pie when she saw him walk in and order a cold drink and a sandwich. He saw her too and smiled as he approached her table. He thanked her for getting him the appointment, while acknowledging that he’d been foolish in hoping that a new crown would be available in a couple of days. But the dentist had been able to fit a temporary one so at first glance his teeth appeared fine.

Even now she didn’t know what had made her say yes when he asked if he could join her. She liked being alone at lunchtime. But Giorgio was charming, and soon they were chatting like old friends He told her that he was a management consultant and had come to Ireland a few months earlier, having been offered an excellent opportunity with a global company based in Dublin.

‘What exactly does a management consultant do?’ she asked.

‘Basically help businesses to do better,’ he said. ‘Advise them, work out strategies, that sort of thing.’

‘You did that in Italy before coming here?’

‘Yes. At first I worked in our small family business, then with a company in Rome, but it became complicated and I needed to move on.’

Ailie was about to ask about the complications, but then realised that she had exactly two minutes of her lunch hour left. She apologised to him for rushing away and said she might see him again when he returned for his permanent crown. Back at her desk, she checked when it was scheduled for, at the same time noting that he was forty-two, five years older than her, living in Blackrock, an upmarket coastal town outside the city, and, like her, divorced.

Then Marissa Lange arrived for her root canal treatment and Ailie forgot about Giorgio Marchetti, because Marissa was a nervous patient and had to be treated with calm understanding and lots of support.

She didn’t think about him again until the day he showed up to have the crown fitted. When he came out of the dentist’s room, he turned the full power of his repaired smile in her direction.

‘I feel normal again,’ he said as she took payment from him. ‘The last few weeks have been horrible. I was embarrassed every time I opened my mouth.’

‘But you had the temporary crown,’ Ailie said. ‘You looked fine.’

‘I was very self-conscious,’ said Giorgio. ‘I disliked meeting clients face to face. I did as much of my work on the phone as I could, but that’s not how it should be.’

‘Well, you look great now,’ she assured him. ‘You can be confident about meeting anyone.’

‘I am.’ He smiled again. ‘And I wondered . . . would you like to have dinner with me?’

‘Dinner?’ She looked at him in surprise.

‘Or a drink,’ he said. ‘In Italy I would be more used to saying dinner, but I know in Ireland there is the pub, so if you’d prefer that . . .’

Ailie was torn between wanting to go to dinner with someone as easy-going and attractive as him, and not wanting to get emotionally involved with anyone, given that the two relationships she’d had since her divorce had ended badly.

‘But if not, don’t worry,’ he said when she remained silent. ‘I liked talking to you in the café before. And I thought you liked talking to me. I don’t have any girlfriends in Dublin. Not girlfriends,’ he amended quickly. ‘Friends who are women. It would be nice to talk to a woman. Most of my colleagues are men. Most of my clients too, which is not a good thing really.’

She laughed then, and said OK, and they arranged to meet in an Italian restaurant in Blackrock that he assured her was authentic, the owners coming from a town not far from his own.

Giorgio was good company, and when he told her he’d grown up in a family of three girls and two boys with his widowed mother being the lynchpin that held it all together, she understood why he was so at ease talking with women.

‘To be honest,’ he said, as they enjoyed a nightcap in the pub next door after their meal, ‘I was very tired of all the women in my life when I left Italy. But I miss them now.’

‘Were they part of the complications?’ she asked.

‘A little,’ he replied. ‘It’s hard to be businesslike with family sometimes.’

‘How often do you go back?’ she asked.

‘Not at all yet.’ His words were cautious. ‘I needed some time away. But I miss my country.’

‘I’ve never been to Italy,’ she said. ‘I keep saying I’ll go to Rome some day, but . . . well, life gets in the way.’

‘Hopefully you’ll visit us,’ he said. ‘Naturally I’m biased towards my part of Italy. Trieste is closer to Slovenia than Rome, but it’s very beautiful. My family home is a few kilometres outside the city, with views over the Adriatic.’

‘Sounds nearly as nice as Blackrock,’ she said, and he laughed.

The next time they went out together, she asked about his ex-wife.

‘Do you mind if we talk about her another time?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure I’m able to speak about the divorce in a good way yet.’

‘Was it messy?’ Ailie looked at him quizzically.

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘In that case, I won’t mention it again,’ she assured him. ‘I was lucky with mine. There was no bitterness. We both realised we’d married too young and wanted different things. Josh has a new wife now and a couple of kids, and he’s happy out.’

‘Do you keep in touch?’

‘No, but for a while he lived close by me and I bumped into him from time to time. Not any more, though; they’ve moved to Carlow.’

‘And you’re happy?’ he asked.

‘Marrying him was a mistake. Divorcing him wasn’t. I’m very happy.’ She was going to add that today was the happiest she’d been since then, but decided that made her sound overenthusiastic, so she said nothing.

But she knew she was falling for Giorgio Marchetti.

He was a very easy man to fall for.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and returned from the past to the present. Her brother’s wife, Maggie, was standing beside her.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

Ailie nodded.

‘You should have some soup,’ said Maggie.

Ailie nodded again. The other mourners were now finding seats at the round tables, dividing themselves into the factions they’d been in before. All of the Marchettis were together, along with Marco and Flavia. It wasn’t entirely unexpected to see Flavia sitting with them. Ailie’s daughter with Giorgio and Giorgio’s son with Sophia were close, and she knew Marco would keep an eye on his half-sister; he was unfailingly kind towards her. But the rest of the family were less so, although somehow this seemed not to bother Flavia in the slightest. She was smiling now, Ailie saw, and finding a seat beside Chiara’s daughter, Beatrice, who’d come to the funeral in place of her mother. Beatrice was a few years younger than Marco and the two had always got along. It looked like she was getting along with Flavia too, for which Ailie was very grateful.

As she studied the occupants of the table, she caught the gaze of the oldest of the Marchetti sisters. At sixty-two, Sara was very much like photos of old Signora Marchetti at the same age, with her almost oblong face and her eyes, hazel like Giorgio’s, impeccably made up. But while Signora Marchetti had looked like an elderly woman in the photos, Sara’s skin was smooth and barely lined. Her dark blonde hair was shoulder length, without any traces of grey, and she was wearing a black suit trimmed with cream fur. She was as effortlessly stylish as her brother had always been.

Sara had spoken very briefly to Ailie at the service, saying that Giorgio’s death was a family tragedy and that they were all broken-hearted it had happened so far from home. Then she’d swept to her seat, leaving Ailie standing alone in the aisle, the riposte that Giorgio had been at home coming too late to her to be of any use.

‘Soup?’ repeated Maggie.

Ailie dragged her gaze away from Sara Marchetti and allowed Maggie to steer her towards her own family. The Taylors took up four tables because her brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands plus their children had all come to the funeral. As some had to travel from her home county of Donegal in the north of the country, and others from the west and the south, it was a show of support that Ailie appreciated.

She slid into her seat, Maggie on one side of her and Deirdre, her younger sister, on the other.

‘You doing OK?’ asked Deirdre.

‘I’m fine. A bit of a headache.’

‘Here’s some heavy-duty paracetamol.’ Deirdre took a blister pack from her bag and handed her a tablet. ‘That’ll sort you.’

‘Thanks.’ Ailie swallowed it with some water, although she doubted it would have much effect as the noise level in the room continued to rise from the chatter of the mourners. There were occasional bursts of laughter too, and then some loud shushing when Antonio Marchetti stood up and began to speak in a mixture of English and Italian.

He thanked everyone for coming, and then said what a first-rate man his brother had been and how sad it was that he’d died in a foreign country, and how they’d miss him for the rest of their lives. Ailie felt herself tense at the proprietorial way he was taking control of things, as though he’d been the one who’d organised the funeral and was paying for the refreshments, when the truth was that he’d flown in from Trieste the night before and hadn’t spoken to her either prior to his arrival or since.

There was applause after he finished speaking, and a hushed silence as he launched into what he called Giorgio’s favourite song, ‘Vesti la giubba’, a mournful operatic number that Ailie had never heard before. She sat rigidly upright as he sang, conceding that while the song was sad, it was beautiful, and that Antonio had a wonderfully rich voice.

There was more applause afterwards. She worried that someone else would start to sing because her head couldn’t take any more, but fortunately nobody stood up.

‘I think I’ll go now,’ she told Deirdre. ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘I’ll see you home,’ Deirdre said.

‘There’s no need.’

‘You need someone with you,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll tell Marco and Flavia it’s time to leave.’

‘If they want to stay, that’s fine,’ said Ailie. ‘I think Flavia needs the comfort of having him close for a bit.’

Deirdre nodded, then went over to the Marchetti table while Ailie put on her black coat.

‘Flavia is going to stay with Marco and Beatrice,’ Deirdre told her when she returned. ‘Sara says she’ll call you in the morning. When are they going back to Italy?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon, I think,’ said Ailie.

‘Good riddance,’ said Deirdre.

‘Ah, not really,’ lied Ailie. ‘They’re all grieving too.’

She didn’t look back as she followed her sister out of the pub.



Sybil shook the rain from her pink umbrella and placed it in the brass holder in the private hallway outside her apartment. Then she unlocked the apartment door, removed her raincoat and hung it between the tweed jacket and the red anorak already on the coat stand. Despite its undoubted quality, the umbrella hadn’t been completely effective against the misty rain that had swirled in all directions while she visited the cemetery. Her hair was slightly damp and had lost some of its shape. But unlike the days when she’d had long, dark tresses, and with a nod to the quality of the products she used on it now, it no longer frizzed manically because of a little bit of rain.

She walked into the kitchen and placed her bag neatly on the alcove shelf above the table. Then she made herself a mug of Earl Grey tea. She took an orange Club Milk biscuit from the jar on the countertop and sat at the table, where she unloaded her iPad, took off her distance specs and zoomed in so that she could read the news headlines without having to bother changing to the reading glasses she knew would be at the bottom of her bag. Not that she was truly interested in what wars were currently being waged, what politician was shamelessly riding out a scandal that would have sunk him in her youth, or what infrastructure project had run catastrophically over budget. In Sybil’s sixty-eight years, she had seen all these things before, more than once. Although, she reflected as she bit into the chocolate edge of the Club Milk, not with hourly updates. That was the problem with digital media. Being fed constant information on crises you could do nothing about, and feeling vaguely guilty that you weren’t doing anything to solve them. It was exhausting.

Even as she snorted at the updates, a notification arrived from a travel company she’d accidentally subscribed to a few weeks earlier who seemed to think she needed hourly prompts to book a holiday. As she deleted it with a swipe of her finger, it was replaced by a text message. Seeing the name of the sender, she heaved a sigh and reached for her bag. She took out her mobile, and grimaced as she realised she’d missed three calls.

She dug into the bag again and this time retrieved her dark-rimmed reading glasses, which, as she’d suspected, were right at the bottom. She didn’t bother putting them on, but held them in front of her nose as she looked at the missed calls as well as the text.

‘Oh, for feck’s sake,’ she muttered as she saw Tansy’s name repeated over and over. ‘What now?’

Though she knew her sister would have spotted that she’d seen the text, Sybil didn’t bother getting back to her straight away. Instead, she finished her biscuit and sipped from her mug of tea, gazing unseeingly from the kitchen to the living room with its expansive views of Dublin Bay. Her thoughts returned to her visit to the cemetery earlier. Theo would have approved. He wasn’t buried there (she’d done as he’d asked and scattered his ashes in the bay), but visiting old cemeteries was something they’d enjoyed doing together. Given that they both worked in forward-looking industries, they felt it worthwhile to respect the connection to the past that old cemeteries held. She knew some people might consider it odd that she liked to wander around graveyards, but these days she didn’t care what other people thought. As a post-menopausal, childless and now single woman, she’d gone through the being-judged stage of her life and had emerged the other side with no more fucks to give. Besides, visiting the cemetery made her feel connected to Theo in the same way that looking out over the water from the comfort of her apartment did, and she was fine with that no matter what anyone else might think.

She’d almost finished her tea when her phone vibrated on the countertop in front of her. She was debating whether to answer when she noticed that the caller ID showed Claire and not Tansy.

‘Hi, honey,’ she said.

‘Whew, you’re alive,’ said Claire.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Mum rang you earlier and you didn’t answer. She texted too. No reply.’

‘I was out and somehow managed to put my phone on silent,’ said Sybil. ‘I only saw her calls a few minutes ago. Did she get you to ring me in the hopes I’d answer you even if I was dead?’

‘You did answer.’ Claire laughed. ‘So you’re very much alive. Obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ repeated Sybil.

‘Will you call her back?’

‘What does she want?’

‘I dunno,’ said Claire, though her tone wasn’t convincing.

‘I’ll call,’ said Sybil. ‘But not right now. I’m having tea and biscuits and drying off after being caught in the rain.’

‘Oh no! Where were you?’ asked Claire.

‘Out stretching my legs. Maybe I should get a dog,’ Sybil mused. ‘Then every time I went out people could think I was walking it. It’s more acceptable to be a dog walker than someone on a solitary stroll. And if you caught me talking to myself, I could say I was talking to the dog.’

‘Stop it.’ Claire laughed again.

‘It might keep your mother out of my hair.’

‘Probably not, knowing Mum,’ said Claire. ‘Could you please call her and put her mind at rest.’

‘I might do it more often if she stopped treating me like a child who needs a tracking device.’

‘You live on your own,’ Claire reminded her. ‘All she wants is to make sure—’

‘That I haven’t fallen down the stairs and broken my neck?’ interrupted Sybil. ‘There are no stairs in my apartment to fall down.’

‘I know. But she worries about you.’

‘I’m neither elderly nor infirm,’ said Sybil. ‘At any rate, she’s not that much younger than me herself, so I don’t know why she needs to fuss so much.’

‘Fussing over people is Mum’s thing.’ Claire’s voice was wheedling. ‘Come on, Auntie Sybil. Give her a break.’

‘Less of your auntie,’ retorted her aunt. ‘It’s been Sybil to you since you were fourteen. I guess you’ll text her and say you’ve spoken to me.’

‘Um, yes.’

‘Tansy worries far too much about far too little,’ said Sybil. ‘You can tell her I’ll call in shortly.’

‘Thanks,’ said Claire. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Sybil waited exactly ten minutes before contacting Tansy, who answered immediately.

‘So you’ve finally surfaced.’

‘I was out,’ said Sybil.

‘Anywhere nice?’

She hesitated before telling her sister that she’d been at the cemetery. She might not care about being judged by most people, but Tansy’s ability to unsettle her was altogether different.

There was an equally long pause before Tansy spoke.

‘Has somebody died?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t say.’

‘I didn’t go for any specific reason,’ replied Sybil.

‘It’s cold and damp out. Why would you go to a cemetery in the rain for no reason? It’s weird. People your age need to guard against becoming weird.’

‘I went for a walk, and believe it or not, it’s a very calming place to walk through.’ Sybil ignored the crack about her age. ‘Not at all weird. Also, for context, it was an anniversary visit.’

‘You mean because it’s All Souls’ Day? I didn’t think religious feast days meant anything to you.’

‘They don’t. It’s the anniversary of when Theo sold Echo.’

‘Oh.’ Tansy paused. ‘I won’t say weird, but it’s an odd way of marking a happy occasion.’

‘I accept that strolling through a cemetery mightn’t be everyone’s idea of a good time,’ acknowledged Sybil. ‘But we both liked to walk there and it seemed the right thing to do today.’

‘Are you OK?’ asked Tansy. ‘Really?’

‘I’m fine,’ Sybil assured her. ‘Anyhow, why were you looking for me?’

‘It’s my birthday next week.’ Tansy’s tone was more upbeat. ‘I wanted to invite you to dinner.’

‘Oh, fab. Where?’

‘At mine,’ said Tansy. ‘I’m doing it myself.’

‘Gosh. That’s a lot of work for your birthday,’ said Sybil. ‘Who’ll be there?’

‘The whole family. James is back for a week, so it’ll be nice to have us all together. Nothing flashy, very casual.’

Sybil mentally counted the family members. Between herself, Tansy and her husband, Colin, along with their children and grandchildren, there would be nine people.

‘Shouldn’t we be treating you to an extravagant meal out instead?’

‘Which would mean Claire having to organise a babysitter,’ said Tansy. ‘This way, she and Larry and the kids can stay over. Saves them a lot of hassle. You can too, if you like. There’s plenty of room.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Sybil. ‘I can’t help feeling it’s putting you to a lot of bother. I don’t mind treating—’

‘I’ve told you what I want,’ Tansy interrupted her. ‘And it’s not a case of throwing money at a problem like you invariably do. It’s a case of me being with the people who matter to me on my birthday.’

‘I appreciate that.’ Sybil ignored the barb about money in the same way as the crack about her age.

‘I’m not so sure,’ remarked Tansy.

Sybil took a deep breath. How was it, she wondered, that conversations with her sister so often ended up like this, with her having to defend herself against vague accusations she didn’t quite understand? Although she understood the ‘throwing money at a problem’ jibe. Tansy always said that she bought her way out of trouble, or indeed out of anything she didn’t want to do. She’d first levelled the accusation over forty years earlier, when she discovered Sybil had a cleaner. Having a cleaner back then meant you were the kind of person who had notions about themselves. And Sybil knew that Tansy very much felt she and Theo had notions.

This had been triggered by the change in their relative wealth when Theo sold Echo, his first company. He’d made enough from it to allow them to move from the tiny starter home they’d bought in Swords, a commuter town near the airport, to the upmarket costal suburb of Sutton, overlooking Dublin Bay. And because he’d set up another company straight away, and because both Theo and Sybil were working long hours (him on his own projects, her in the bank where they’d first met), they paid someone to clean the house once a week. It was the cleaner more than the move that had rattled Tansy’s cage.

But even Sybil’s mother had used the word ‘notions’ when she’d heard.

Nobody apart from Theo and Sybil themselves had expected Echo to be a commercial success. After all, Theo came from a farming background and his family had no interest in technology. Sybil’s father worked in the civil service and her mother, like most mothers of the time, stayed home to care for her children. In both cases, the only people they knew with their own businesses were shopkeepers, electricians or plumbers, and none of them were particularly well off. Even before Sybil and Theo married, there had been plenty of discussions between her parents about their freeloading prospective son-in-law.

‘When will she be able to have a baby?’ Dolly regularly asked her husband. ‘How can she even think about a family of her own when she’s working day and night to support his faffing around on that computer thingy?’

Dolly was longing for a grandchild, but on the rare occasions she tried to speak to Sybil about it, her daughter merely shrugged and said there was plenty of time for babies, if that was what she and Theo decided. Meanwhile, Sybil’s father remained horrified that Theo had left a safe and secure job at IBM to work for himself. The day before their marriage, he asked Sybil if she was one hundred per cent sure about it, reminding her that she was already three years older than Theo and therefore more mature and responsible, and that her maturity and responsibility would only increase while she was the one with a decent job in the bank and he played games on a screen in the back bedroom.

Theo wasn’t playing games. He knew exactly what he was doing. And Sybil, who’d first met him when he’d come to install the bank’s brand-new mainframe computer that had an entire room of its own, knew that he was exceptional. Which meant she was totally prepared to support his brilliance until it was rewarded.

Sybil knew that Tansy also considered Theo, with his long hair and frayed jeans, to be a waster in comparison with her own husband, Colin, who wore a blue suit, white shirt and polished shoes to the office every day. Tansy occasionally voiced the opinion that one day Theo would have to get a proper job, especially when children came along. At those times Sybil would tell her that Theo did have a proper job. Sh