Prologue
On days like this, I love living in Bury St. Edmunds, when the spires of the cream stone cathedral seem illuminated against the vivid blue sky and even the black flintstones on the ruined abbey walls gleam under the sunshine as though they’ve been polished.
It’s only early April, but it’s the warmest day of the year so far by amile,and I’m already feeling so much better after getting out of the office. I’ve just come off a phone call with a nightmare client—she and her home renovations are enough to put me off architecture for life: Ineedthis coffee break.
I’m wandering among the abbey ruins, looking for a wall low enough to perch on and drink my coffee, when I see my fiancé, Scott, sitting on a bench in the shade of a giant fir tree. Before I can call out a delighted hello and go join him, I register that he’s with Nadine.
Scott set up his own landscape gardening business when we moved here from London a year ago, and Nadine started working for him soon after that, days before he asked me to marry him in the rose gardens of a local manor house. She’s twenty-nine and is tall and strong with golden skin and an infectious laugh. I liked her the moment I met her and on everyoccasion since then, so I’m not sure why my intended greeting has lodged in my throat.
My partner and his co-worker are almost two feet apart, but there’s something about their body language that strikes me as odd. Scott is leaning forward, his white T-shirt stretched taut across his broad back and his forearms planted on his thighs. Nadine has her arms and legs crossed, her face tilted toward Scott’s and her typically bouncy, high blond ponytail seems preternaturally still. The angled position of Scott’s face mirrors Nadine’s, but neither of them is looking at the other. Nor are they speaking. They seem frozen. Tense.
A squirrel runs along the jagged wall to my left. Birds are singing in the surrounding trees. Children laugh in the distant playground. But I stand and stare, unease creeping over me.
They’re sitting apart. They’re not doing anything wrong. And yet...
Something does not feel right.
Then, suddenly, Scott turns and stares straight at Nadine. There’s a strange look on his handsome face, an expression I can’t decipher. My heart is in my throat as she slowly lifts her chin and meets his eyes, two perfect side profiles: his thick, dark eyebrows to her flawless arches; his straight nose to her small, upturned one; two sets of full lips, serious and unsmiling.
Seconds tick past and darkness washes over me. To go from feeling light and warm to sick and cold is completely hideous.
They are still staring at each other. And not a word has passed between them.
I jolt as Scott launches himself to his feet and strides off in the direction of town. Nadine watches him until he’s out of sight, then visibly exhales, hunching forward and placing herhead in her hands. She stays like that for a minute or so before getting up and slowly following Scott.
I realize I’m shaking.
Whatwasthat?
Is my fiancé having an affair? And if not, is he thinking about having one?
Hang on. They onlylookedat each other. They didn’t do anything wrong. I like Nadine. I trust Scott.
But something does appear to be going on between them.
My mother has always told me to trust my instincts. But it’s hard to trust your instincts when they’re breaking yourheart.
1
Three months later
New York was shrouded by cloud cover. I’ve only ever flown to Indianapolis via Chicago, so I was hoping to see the infamous green void of Central Park bordered by skyscrapers, but by the time the sky finally clears, all it reveals is a patchwork landscape of fields and farms far below.
I’ve been traveling all day and it will be after 5 p.m. by the time I touch down, which is ten o’clock at night back in the UK. I’m shattered, but thankfully Dad is coming to collect me from the airport. I know that my exhaustion is not entirely due to lack of sleep. The last three months have taken their toll on me.
Scott was sittingat the kitchen table when I arrived home from work that day back in April, after a horrible afternoon of seesawing between emotions. One minute I’d felt wildly unsettled and the next I’d convinced myself that the look he and Nadine shared meant nothing. But as soon as I saw Scott’s face, I knew that my intuition had served me correctly. Therewassomething going on between them, but it was an emotional connection, rather than a physical affair.
He wanted to talk to me as soon as I walked through the front door, which threw me as I was expecting to have to demand answers, not have them dished up to me on a plate. And when he started to confess his feelings, I still thought he planned to ask for my forgiveness—which I know I would have granted. We were getting married in December and were hoping to try for a baby in the new year. No way was I throwing away our beautiful future just because he’d developed a silly crush.
Maybe I was being naive, but it took me a while to realize that he was leaving me.
I remember the details of our conversation so clearly. I even remember that his fingernails still had an arc of dirt buried deep, close to his skin, and that he smelled earthy, of fresh air and garden soil. He was so familiar to me and yet so like a stranger. I’d never seen him looking so torn and tormented.
“I do love you, Wren,” he claimed, tears clumping his brown lashes together in spikes. “In some ways, I wish I’d never met her because I think you and I could have been happy. But lately I’ve started to wonder if we’re really right for each other.”
It had taken him meeting Nadine, working with her almost every day, to recognize how well suited they were, how they clicked on another level.
At that point, they hadn’t even spoken to each other about how they felt. Nadine had taken some time off to go and stay with her parents and Scott had sensed it was because she wanted to get some distance from him to clear her head. But when she came in to work that day in April and handed in her resignation, he realized he couldn’t let her go.
