Chapters (78)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
- Also by Nicci French
- About the Publisher
Now that she was here, Jude wasn’t sure what she was meant to do or to feel. She wasn’t even sure why she had come, carrying a little bunch of anemones, and she felt suddenly foolish. She thought of Liam as she had first known him, beautiful and dangerous, blazing with life and crackling with energy. She thought of him after that crash, casually throwing away his future in order to set her on her own path away from him. She remembered him sitting across from her in the café eleven years later, little laugh lines round his eyes, asking her for a simple favor.
She thought of what Vin had said, and gave an involuntary shiver. She would never know what Liam would have done, and perhaps that was okay. You have to live with doubt and uncertainty; you have to hold contradictions together and not struggle to resolve them. You have to learn that you’re not as in control of life as you might like.
She squatted down. There were dead leaves heaped up at the base of the stone and she cleared them away, then placed her flowers there, bright as jewels. She thought of saying something, but what would she say? I was always in love with you? I was never in love with you? Was she here to say thank you or to say sorry, to ask forgiveness, to curse him, or simply to acknowledge that it was over, he was over—a glorious, terrible man now buried in a sinking landscape of the long dead?
Only when she stood up did she notice that a woman had turned up at the neighboring grave, and was on her knees, digging out weeds with a miniature trowel.
“My Lewis,” she said, nodding toward the gravestone. “I come every day.”
“Was he your husband?”
“Yes. He died three years ago. Not young like your one there, just thirty. That’s so sad.” She glanced at the flowers Jude had laid. “I’m glad you’ve come to see him. I think no one ever comes. He’s been left all alone. Isn’t that a shame?”
“There are different ways of remembering someone.”
“That’s true. Did you know him very well?”
Jude looked at the woman, then back at the head-stone.
“No,” she said at last. “He was like a dream. I don’t think that I really knew him at all.”
Acknowledgments
While writing this story about places we weren’t allowed to visit, we were helped and supported in so many different ways by people that we weren’t allowed to meet.
They found extraordinary possibilities of being creative in a world turned upside down.
Our UK agents: Sarah Ballard, Eli Keren, St. John Donald.
Our UK publishers: Suzanne Baboneau, Ian Chapman, Jess Barratt, Hayley McMullan, Katherine Armstrong, Louise Davies.
Thanks also to the booksellers, the book bloggers and the readers who have kept us going through a dark year.