Cover

Dedication

For Sharon, with love from your naughty little sister.

Prologue

October 2016

‘At a funeral, Jason,’ I said, laughing bitterly and shaking my head. ‘At your own aunt’s funeral. Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more appalled. You’re so obviously beyond help and hope.’

I held the front door open and he exited without argument, before stopping on the top step, making no attempt either to walk away, or to come back inside. ‘I can’t explain, Edie,’ he said quietly, his head bowed. ‘It’s a—’

I held up a hand. ‘Well, you’re in luck, because I don’t want an explanation. I just want you to go.’ With that, I closed the front door and returned to the living room.

Once there, I sat back down on the sofa and ran my eyes around the room, taking in our furniture, our photographs, our books, and desperately searching for something which hadn’t been shared with, or touched and tainted by, Jason; something which was wholly mine.

At last, I found it lying on the coffee table, just an outstretched arm away.

Leaning forward, I picked up the large, leather-bound notebook I used to jot down project thoughts and ideas, whenever inspiration struck away from the office. And as a sudden sense of purpose halted the tears which had been flowing, unconsciously and unchecked, since closing the door on Jason – and on our relationship – I reached for a pen, dried my eyes and set to work.

Chapter 1

June 2018

I gazed for a moment longer at the late-spring rain streaming down the floor-to-ceiling windows behind Roger’s desk, before pivoting slowly in my chair and scanning the large white-walled, open-plan office: my safe space.

Ruby and I were currently its only occupants. Luke’s workstation, and Roger and Cameron’s long white desks and drawing tables, sat empty, while behind the glass walls of her office, Alison talked intensely into the telephone.

‘It’s going to be very male out here when you go,’ I said, concluding my rotation with my chair facing Ruby.

She looked up briefly from the printed drawings of a 1930s terraced house over which she was hunched. The design, for a basement excavation and rear extension, would be her last for Alison Gerrard Ltd before she took up her new post at Lovelock McCormick Architecture in Bath, in just one week’s time.

She lifted her head, shaking her blunt-cut, white-blonde bob out of her eyes and away from her sharp features. ‘It’ll be fine, Edie,’ she said, picking up a piece of sushi from a black plastic tray on the edge of her desk and popping it into her mouth.