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Chapters (100)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Note to Readers
  4. Dedication
  5. Prologue
  6. Part One
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Part Two
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. Chapter Twenty-Five
  33. Chapter Twenty-Six
  34. Part Three
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. Chapter Thirty-Three
  42. Chapter Thirty-Four
  43. Chapter Thirty-Five
  44. Chapter Thirty-Six
  45. Part Four
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Chapter Forty-Two
  52. Chapter Forty-Three
  53. Chapter Forty-Four
  54. Chapter Forty-Five
  55. Chapter Forty-Six
  56. Chapter Forty-Seven
  57. Chapter Forty-Eight
  58. Chapter Forty-Nine
  59. Chapter Fifty
  60. Chapter Fifty-One
  61. Chapter Fifty-Two
  62. Chapter Fifty-Three
  63. Chapter Fifty-Four
  64. Chapter Fifty-Five
  65. Chapter Fifty-Six
  66. Chapter Fifty-Seven
  67. Chapter Fifty-Eight
  68. Chapter Fifty-Nine
  69. Chapter Sixty
  70. Chapter Sixty-One
  71. Chapter Sixty-Two
  72. Chapter Sixty-Three
  73. Chapter Sixty-Four
  74. Chapter Sixty-Five
  75. Chapter Sixty-Six
  76. Chapter Sixty-Seven
  77. Chapter Sixty-Eight
  78. Chapter Sixty-Nine
  79. Chapter Seventy
  80. Chapter Seventy-One
  81. Chapter Seventy-Two
  82. Chapter Seventy-Three
  83. Chapter Seventy-Four
  84. Chapter Seventy-Five
  85. Chapter Seventy-Six
  86. Part Five
  87. Chapter Seventy-Seven
  88. Chapter Seventy-Eight
  89. Chapter Seventy-Nine
  90. Chapter Eighty
  91. Part Six
  92. Chapter Eighty-One
  93. Chapter Eighty-Two
  94. Chapter Eighty-Three
  95. Author’s Note
  96. Book Club Questions for The Life We Almost Had
  97. Acknowledgements
  98. Extract
  99. Chapter One
  100. About the Publisher

I shook my head. Four hours. There were four hours between Anna and me. On a good day I could make the journey in three hours forty-eight. On a particularly bad day it took almost five. The distance between us was a problem. With my eyes burning with tiredness and my bones aching to rest, it seemed ridiculous now we’d ever thought that it wouldn’t be.

We couldn’t always see each other every weekend because I had to work one Saturday in four. When we were together, Anna was often marking or planning future lessons and when she took a break it wasn’t all spontaneous, rampant sex like it should be in the first throes of a relationship. Anna living with her mum meant we didn’t get as much privacy as I’d have liked. Don’t get me wrong, Mrs Adlington – Patricia – was lovely. Despite still carrying the shell-shocked look of grief that she’d lost her husband when he was only forty-nine, and the burden of caring for her own mother who was showing signs of dementia, she was kind and funny and had welcomed me with open arms. Often Patricia would stay at her mum’s on a Saturday night, giving me and Anna some alone time but it wasn’t the same – trying to relax on an unfamiliar cream sofa that I couldn’t eat or drink on, surrounded by an unhealthy amount of cat ornaments, photos of Anna’s dad staring down at us from the walls. Sometimes I just wanted my own flat. My own sofa. Eating a chicken korma in front of the TV instead of having to sit at the table, but Anna didn’t drive and the travel fell on my shoulders, which were stiff with exhaustion.

The ‘us’ of Alircia, who’d talked and laughed and lived, were unrecognizable to the people we had become. We had thought we could beat the statistics, and in a way we had. There’s less than a 50 per cent chance of couples staying together in a long-distance relationship, and out of those couples who don’t make it, the average time they were together was four and a half months. We’d made it to ten so that was a win of sorts.

The screen of my phone lit up with a photo of Anna. She was on the beach in the turquoise dress she’d worn on our last night in Alircia. She looked so beautiful my heart ached.

I rejected the call.