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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017
Copyright © M L Roberts 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
M L Roberts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008259860
Version: 2019-03-27
Table of Contents
For my husband. His constant support has been everything.
Sometimes you look at people and you think their life is perfect. You envy them, what they have, what you assume they have. The perfect marriage, perfect careers, perfect home. They have it all, or that’s how it seems to those on the outside. But sometimes, behind those closed doors of that seemingly perfect home, secrets live in the shadows, just waiting to reveal themselves. Secrets that make that perfect life more fragile and fractured than anyone could imagine. Secrets that cast a darkness over everything, even when the sun is shining.
I had secrets.
And my life wasn’t perfect, even when I thought it was.
We all had secrets.
We all told lies.
We all had a darkness that blocked out the sun.
No … my life wasn’t perfect …
‘Come on, Michael. Dance with me.’
‘When was the last time you saw me dance, Ellie?’
I lean back against the wall, the edge of my mouth twisting up into a smirk. ‘Our wedding.’
‘Almost fourteen years ago.’
I put down my gin and tonic and reach out and grab him by his belt, pulling him towards me, smiling as my mouth almost touches his. ‘But they’re playing our song.’
‘We have a song now?’ He arches an eyebrow and gives me the kind of grin that made me fall for him in the first place, all those years ago.
‘For a supposedly intelligent man you can be such a dick sometimes.’
He laughs,