Merrion Palmer was Judge Guy Stockdale’s mistress. His Honour’s ‘totty,’ as the Clerk to the Court so succinctly put it. Guy had been having an affair with her for seven years, and neither Laura, his wife of forty years, nor his two grown-up sons, knew anything about her. Guy and Merrion enjoyed a blissful, uncomplicated relationship in stolen moments in Merrion’s Bayswater flat, but to the rest of the world Guy seemed to be the model husband, father and grandfather. Now the time had come for Guy to move on. Conscious of the passing years, of the wasted opportunities, he didn’t want to keep Merrion a secret any more. He wanted to share her with his family, with the world. He wants, dammit, to marry her. And he is quite unprepared for the painful storm which follows.

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Joanna Trollope is the author of a number of historical and contemporary novels including The Choir, A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector’s Wife, The Men and the Girls and A Spanish Lover.

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