by Adele Parks
Abigail admitted to herself that Mel had left her alone to enjoy her student years with Rob. Other young women might have decided that they didn’t care that Abigail would be hurt; they might have stuck around, even tried to win Rob from her. Not that he was a prize. Abigail could see that now. After a lifetime of loving him, adoring him, worshipping him, she could finally see him for what he was. Selfish, callous, pitiless.
They’d managed very well together for a long time because Abi was also selfish. And callous. But not, it appeared, pitiless.
She emailed the police and said she remembered putting her heel through the hem of her wedding dress. She remembered tripping herself up.
She had moved away with her baby, because it was the least disruptive and painful route.
Abigail had been blinded with a furious sense of revenge, retaliation and retribution. Her mind had been temporarily clouded with rage, lust, and want. She had tricked Liam, used him. But then she had set him free.
Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thank you to my editor Kate Mills who is fabulously enthusiastic, dedicated and all-round brilliant! I’m so lucky to have you! Also, to Lisa Milton for the most wonderful warm welcome to HQ, Harper Collins.
I’m so delighted to be working with such incredible teams in the UK and across the globe. I am thoroughly grateful for, and appreciative of, the talent and commitment of every last person involved in this book’s launch. I’ve been in this business for long enough to know that if a book is lucky enough to be successful, then that’s because there’s an enormous team of people doing their jobs incredibly well. Some of those people are JP Hunting, Georgina Green, Eleanor Goymer, Darren Shoffren, Sophie Calder, Claire Brett, Celia Lomas, Jack Chalmer and Louise McGrory. Thank you all very much.
Also I want to send a massive thank you across the seas to James Kellow, Loriana Sacilotto, Margaret Marbury, Leo McDonald, Carina Nunstedt, Celine Hamilton, Pauline Riccius, Anna Hoffmann, Birgit Salzmann, Eugene Ashton, Olinka Nell, Rahul Dixit and many others who I have yet to meet. Thank you for taking my novel from my desk in Surrey, England to incredible places far and wide throughout the world. That’s so ridiculously exciting. I’m incredibly grateful.
Thank you Jonny Geller, for eighteen years of support, encouragement and friendship. Eighteen years! We are quite simply an awesome team, right?!
Thank you to all my readers, bloggers, reviewers, retailers, librarians and fellow authors who have supported this book.
Thank you Jimmy and Conrad, for everything. Always.
Finally, I’d like to warmly acknowledge Gillian Burton for her generous support of National Literacy Trust, an independent charity working with schools and communities to give disadvantaged children the literacy skills to succeed in life. It was a pleasure slipping your name onto one of my big-hearted characters.
Questions for Discussion
1.To what extent is this a novel about revenge?
2.‘You just want to look after them . . .’ Mel says in the prologue. Is Mel looking after Liam, or is she looking after what she wants him to be?
3.‘She wasn’t my only friend, or even my best friend, but she was my favourite.’ Do we have different friends for different times in our lives? Should we ever go back and revisit old friendships?
4.‘That’s what friends do though, don’t they? Forgive your moments of crazy recklessness or selfishness . . .’ Is Mel right? Where do the lines of forgiveness get drawn in friendship?
5.Abi has been unable to have children with Rob and longed for a family of her own. Do you think she would have behaved the same way had she been a mother herself?
6.At what point should we let children become adults?
7.‘Real friends tell it like it is,’ thinks Mel. Do they? Should we always be truthful with our friends?
8.Mel and Ben respond differently to news of the affair. Is their reaction typical of their gender? Do you think Ben’s reaction might have been the same if everything that happened had happened to his 17-year-old daughter, rather than his 17-year-old son?
9.‘His wife had lied to him their entire marriage.’ Ben is angry and hurt when the identity of Liam’s father is revealed. What do you think of Mel’s reasons for keeping the father of her child a secret?
10.‘It was only when she thought she might lose the baby that she began to develop some understanding of what she had subjected Mel to.’ Does Abi really understand what she’s done at the end? Will being a mother change her?
About the Publisher
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