Back The Perfect Couple Save as PDF
Chapters (46)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Lisa Hall
  3. About the Author
  4. Also by Lisa Hall
  5. Note to Readers
  6. Dedication
  7. Prologue
  8. Chapter One
  9. Chapter Two
  10. Chapter Three
  11. Chapter Four
  12. Chapter Five
  13. Chapter Six
  14. Chapter Seven
  15. Chapter Eight
  16. Chapter Nine
  17. Chapter Ten
  18. Chapter Eleven
  19. Chapter Twelve
  20. Chapter Thirteen
  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. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  35. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Chapter Thirty-Three
  41. Chapter Thirty-Four
  42. Chapter Thirty-Five
  43. Extract
  44. Chapter One
  45. Acknowledgements
  46. About the Publisher

It’s Caro’s Facebook page. Rupert has been looking at Caro’s Facebook page. I feel sick as I run my eyes over the screen, over her face pressed against his in the top photo. He has clicked onto her photo albums and her face dominates the screen over and over again, tiny pictures of the woman who came before me. I press my hand to my mouth, pulling in a shaky breath. Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. My mother’s voice rings in my ears, and I can almost feel her grip on my arm as she marched me back to bed after she had caught me sitting on the stairs one night, listening to her spin lies to her latest flame. Clearly snoopers never see good things either. I hear the faint flush of the toilet, and jab at the top right-hand button to send the computer back into sleep mode.

‘Em? Are you OK?’ Rupert’s face is flushed as he rubs his hands together, his socked feet silent on the carpet.

‘Just seeing if you wanted a coffee?’ I say brightly, waving the empty coffee mug at him from the desk.

‘Err… yeah, OK. Thanks. I won’t be too long.’ He kisses the top of my head as I squeeze past him, and he takes his seat at the desk, not touching the keyboard until I leave the room.

Paragraph break image

I wrap my fingers around my mug, letting the warmth soak into my cold hands as I stare out of the kitchen window. Despite what Rupert says, he’s not over Caro, and I have to face up to the fact that perhaps he never will be. Why else would he be looking at her Facebook photos? I move towards the double doors to the orangery. We don’t use this room, and as I push open the doors I am struck by the light that fills it. There is a faint hint of dust on the air, which tells me that Anya doesn’t clean in here regularly, and underneath that is the tiniest hint of nectarines. I know why we don’t use this room. It’s Caro’s room. She wanted it, and Rupert built it for her just before she died. She never even got to use it, not properly. After she died Rupert closed it off and we have an unspoken agreement that the room doesn’t get used.

Not anymore. The words come to me as I move towards the huge windows, looking out onto the garden. Maybe we should use it, lay Caro’s ghost to rest a little. I stare into the garden, Caro’s other domain. It would have looked amazing once, when Caro was here and tending to it regularly, but now, although Rupert cuts the lawn, the bushes have been allowed to run riot and brambles fill large patches of the borders at the end of the garden.