First Published: 2020
The novel starts in December 1937.
Rowan Scott, a twenty-three-year-old married woman, goes to a small Christmas party a few friends of hers are throwing. Her husband, Patrick, decides to opt out, and Rowan goes alone. The marriage is not going well because Patrick doesn’t show much interest in her. At the party Rowan runs into Simon Pemberton, and they flirt, go out for dinner together, and they have a passionate night. When she returns home, Rowan gets a call from her sixteen-year-old sister, Thea, who tells her that their father is sick with pneumonia and the doctors are very worried about him.
The next chapter introduces us to Sophie Craxton, who is married to Hugh, and they have two sons, eighteen-year-old Duncan and fifteen-year-old Stuart. Sophie is very worried because Hugh went to his company in Glasgow days ago and she hasn’t heard of him since. The problem is that Sophie has never worried about the details and arrangements when he goes to Glasgow, so he doesn’t know the name of his hotel or how to contact the company. Snooping around his office, she finds a small notebook with some initials and numbers, and one of them is the number for the company. When she calls, a receptionist tells her that Mr Craxton has passed away and his daughters are arranged the funeral. Sophie doesn’t say that she is his wife, so she is left totally stunned and keeps wondering about the daughters. She wonders if Hugh had an affair, but then the children would be too young to arrange the funeral.
Sophie goes to the funeral, and there she learns that Hugh had a double life. He was married and already had a daughter when he met, courted her and asked her to marry him. Then he also had another daughter who was born between Duncan and Stuart. After the service Sophie talks to Thea, but she does not reveal who she really is. From the conversation Sophie learns that the two girls’ mother died in an accident when Thea was a child. When Sophie returns to London, she is angry and hurt, and she realises that she was never married and her two sons are illegitimate. For a bit she debates with herself whether she should tell her children the truth or she should tell them a white lie, but then she thinks about all of Hugh’s lies, and she decides that there will not be more lies for her children.
I imagine that sooner or later Rowan and Thea will know the truth. I wonder if Hugh left a will and how he arranged things for his family. The lawyer has told Thea and Rowan that their father was ruined, and the house had been remortgaged twice. But what about the house where Sophie lives?
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