The Man I Fell In Love With
Sometimes we find happiness where we least expect it…Despite twenty years of contented marriage, Mary Black can’t help but find her eyes drawn to a handsome stranger at a party. But her world is suddenly turned upside down when she sees her husband Leo standing next to him, holding his hand.When Leo leaves Mary for another man, she has no choice but to pick herself up and start again. For the sake of the children she hosts family meals that include Leo and his new partner, and copes with her kids wanting to spend less time with her, and more time with their “fun” dads. But when Leo’s brother Ethan arrives back in town, she finds herself more lost than ever.After living a life of sliding doors and missed opportunities, can Mary finally put herself first and take a chance that could change everything?A wonderfully uplifting novel full of wisdom, spirit and charm – this is a love story with a difference…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Kate Field 2019
Cover design © Becky Glibbery 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock
Kate Field 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 © February 2019; ISBN: 9780008317805
Version: 2018-11-29
To Stephen – because it would be rude not to
Table of Contents
Spotlights swept over the hotel ballroom, illuminating a magical party scene. Christmas decorations twinkled with glittery brilliance; ladies in their finest gowns mingled with men in gorgeous black tie, cheeks flushed by wine and conviviality; and by the side of the stage, in a space unexpectedly lifted from the shadows, my husband held hands with another man.
‘Who’s that with Leo?’ my friend Daisy whispered. Daisy had a figure friends would call petite, and enemies dumpy; she must have had a more limited view than I did. ‘I quite like that sexy bald look. He’s divine.’
But he wasn’t. He was real – horribly, unquestionably real. Those fingers entwined with Leo’s were made of skin and flesh, blood and bone, just like mine. And though their fingers dropped apart as the beam of light settled on the stage and pooled over the edges to where they stood, it was too late. I had seen. Most of the guests, expecting nothing more interesting than a display of luxury raffle prizes, would have seen. Friends, family, colleagues, and fellow school parents were all here tonight, attending this charity dinner at my instigation. Every corner of our lives cracked apart with this one swift blow.
‘Mary?’ Daisy said, as I became aware of a rustle of whispers, of curious gazes landing on me; humiliation scorched my skin. ‘What’s going on?’
I couldn’t reply. I looked at Leo, and Leo looked at me, the rest of the room forgotten. This man had been my best friend for twenty-five years, ever since the glorious summer day when the Black family had moved in next door. He had joined thirteen-year-old me as I sat on our front wall watching the removal men, desperately hoping that tucked away amongst the chairs, tables and white goods, they might produce a girl to end my lonely days. There had been no girl; but as Leo had consoled me by emptying a new tube of Fruit Pastilles to find my favourite green one, I had known there would be no more loneliness.
He had become my boyfriend when I was fifteen; my husband when I was twenty; the father of my children when I was twenty-one and twenty-three. So what was he now, when I was thirty-eight? I had a split second to decide, but it was enough. I read the terror, the anxiety and the appeal on his face, and there could only be one answer. He was what he had always been – my dearest friend – and that could never change, whoever’s hand he held.
I stepped forward on legs that felt like stiff pegs, and met Leo halfway. I drank in every detail of his face – white and frozen above the deep black of his dinner jacket, but still a face I knew better than my own – and then leaned past him and kissed the cheek of the stranger who had held Leo’s hand – the hand that had belonged to me, and my children, for so long. Exclusively, I had thought.
‘How marvellous to see you,’ I said, borrowing my mother-in-law’s favourite word, as if I could borrow her sangfroid too, and with it bury the overwhelming terror of being a public spectacle that I had inherited from my own mother. ‘You’re just in time for the raffle! Daisy, do you have any tickets left for …’ And here my brightness wobbled. Who was he? Leo and I shared everything, including our friends. How could he know someone well enough to link his flesh with theirs, without me even knowing their name?
