“Thank you,” Robin said, making up for Wren’s fading smile with one of his own. “That would be great.” As Wren turned away and made her way to the front of the shop, he wondered how she would pitch his book to any unfortunate passerby. It wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring tale. Robin knew that when he wrote it, and had been ready to deem the whole project a therapy exercise and lock it in a drawer, never to see it again. He still wished he had done that. But his twin sister, Emma, had persuaded him to give it to an agent and it had gone from there.

“It’s so good, Robin. You just don’t see it. It’s the pain. The real, genuine pain of it. It’s sumptuous,” Stan Barrows said, when they had first met at his high-rise agency office. He had never heard pain described as sumptuous before, as though the old, smart gentleman was going to take his heartbreak and carve it up like a steak before his eyes.

Robin didn’t like Barrows but the man had got him a good deal. And his freelance journalism had hit a brick wall. A new wave of journalists were coming to take all the articles away from older guys like him—kids who couldn’t remember a time without the internet, and could bash out an article and sell it before Robin could even fire up his word processor. He needed something. So he signed the contract for the book, trying to think Sam would approve.

And eighteen months later, here Robin was, still not knowing if it had been the right thing to do. He picked up one of the hardbacks and looked at it. The cover was a pale tinge of blue, with four photos of Sam—Polaroid-style—scattered across the background almost as though someone had thrown them. They overlapped, and in the spaces between, the title and his name were embossed in black letters. The topmost photo was of Samantha as a baby, six months old, sitting on a playmat with a toy Thomas the Tank Engine in her hands. The second was a photo of her in her school uniform on her first day of secondary school, looking apprehensive. The third photo was her graduation photo when she graduated from the University of Edinburgh—MSc in Psychology, top of her class. The last photo was of their wedding day—Robin and Samantha Ferringham, till death they do part. Robin didn’t like looking at the book but he wouldn’t have no matter the cover—the photos had been picked by the publisher and he had gladly relinquished that duty. He’d just sent them all the photos he had and they had obviously chosen the most heart-wrenching ones—the ones that would sell.