Author(s): Diana Appleyard

Fiction

Three couples, whose lives are intertwined. They live in the same village, their children are friends and they all appear to have comfortable, even enviable lives. Tom, lazy and charming, looks after the children and thinks about writing a novel while his driven wife Sarah pursues her successful career as a journalist. He seems the least likely candidate as a lover. Nat, a successful and glamorous businessman, is married to the unstylish Cassle, who spends her life in jodhpurs and Wellingtons, but although an apparently ill-matched couple they have a strong and enduring marriage. Cassle's best friend is Laure, the beautiful half-French wife of Gerard who is shutting her out of his life because of financial worries. The unhappiness of this one couple, like a sharp rock being dropped into a still pool, ripples out into the lives of the others with disastrous consequences. Can casual infidelity ever be justified? The results are inevitably far-reaching and ultimately destructive.