Before You Start
It spoils everything, including who is responsible for Nancy’s death, so if you want a spoiler free take, my review is on the site.
The book has three parts, named after Eleanor, Nancy and Mary. Part one is the aftermath, part two goes back to Nancy’s last stretch, and part three belongs to Mary, where the truth finally lands.
Part One Opens
It begins in the dark. Eleanor’s phone rings just after four in the morning. It is Robert, Nancy’s husband, saying Nancy has not come home and her phone goes to voicemail.
Eleanor drives to their house. She knows something Robert does not want to know. Nancy has had a lover for about a year, and she went to meet him after a dinner with Eleanor. Eleanor tells Robert, and then two policemen arrive on the doorstep.
Nancy’s body has been found by the river near Hammersmith. Eleanor goes with Robert to the mortuary and sees her friend, with a turban of bandage over a head wound and a swollen cheek.
The Investigation
A detective sergeant named Daniels asks Eleanor about the dinner. She tells him Nancy left to meet a lover called David, whom she met through work. Nancy’s purse was open with no cash or cards, and her phone is missing.
Eleanor then has to tell Mary, who is devastated. The press swarms. Papers call it a frenzied attack and a crime of passion, and chat shows discuss affairs as if Nancy were a lesson.
Then the funeral, in Sussex, in the rain. Eleanor plans it with Zara, Nancy’s eighteen year old daughter.
Eleanor And Robert
Nine nights after the funeral, Eleanor goes to see Robert and he breaks down in her arms. She kisses him, and they sleep together.
She tells herself it cannot be anything, but she is soon in love with him. Meanwhile, Mary’s husband Howard is becoming mysteriously ill. The doctors can only say that he does not have a terminal illness.
Eleanor’s downstairs neighbour, Irena, is sceptical of Robert. Over the months, Eleanor finds a card from Nancy in Robert’s desk, with a letter from the lover that Robert has kept. She realises Robert knew about the affair long before Nancy died.
Irena And The Novelist
Irena dies alone in her flat, and Eleanor is wracked with guilt because she had left a cake outside the door without knocking.
In the middle of this, Eleanor drives to Yorkshire to see Davide Boyette, the novelist whom the press has linked to the case, because the lover is called David. He says he was on a book tour and hardly knew Nancy. He tells her that death often has no meaning, and she should be kinder to herself.
At Irena’s funeral, Irena’s daughter Sarah gives Eleanor a small wooden box. The words on it mean you are loved.
The End Of Part One
Eleanor visits Nancy’s grave, where she finds Robert. They talk. He says he loves her, but also still loves Nancy, and that the two feelings are impossible together. She walks away, not sure if she is worth loving.
Part Two: Nancy
Part two is Nancy’s, and it is the book’s turn. Her lover phones again and again. She tells him it is over, and he refuses to accept it.
We see her tired, scared and guilty. She cannot confide in Eleanor, because Eleanor would tell her to go to the police, and Nancy cannot do that, with so much to lose. She also knows that Robert has found the lover’s letter.
She has dinner with Eleanor on the last night, where Eleanor is impatient and calls her melodramatic. Nancy leaves to meet her lover at ten, by the river. Then she hears someone behind her, and the part ends.
The Affair, In Nancy’s Words
Through her section, we see how the affair started. Nancy kisses a married man, and she can never quite explain to herself why she did not stop it. She is writing to him in a letter, begging him to leave her alone, and she says she is a weak and selfish person.
The details are uglier than Eleanor imagined. Nancy’s thoughts say the man manipulates her, that she has had sex with him since telling him it was over, and that she once told him she might jump from her study window. She never lets herself be angry. She only feels fear.
Part Three: Mary
Part three begins with Eleanor ringing Mary, in tears. She has ended things with Robert, she says, and she has visited Davide Boyette. Mary tells her to drive straight over, and while waiting she looks for the insurance papers in Howard’s study.
She finds the brown envelope with the Polaroid and the letter signed Louise, and she works out that David is Howard, and Louise is Nancy. Her husband had an affair with her friend.
She decides to keep it secret, to protect her children. She watches Howard, who is now barely himself, and she sees the whole of her marriage differently.
What Mary Remembers
Mary looks back over her marriage, and it is a hard read. She remembers meeting Howard as her boss at a university, the first time he put his hand on the back of her neck, and the way he always had a clever answer.
She remembers the young woman who turned up on her doorstep when she was heavily pregnant, asking for him, and his cold dismissal afterwards. She remembers a night after a party when he made her look at herself in a mirror and told her no one could love her like that.
It is a dark section, and it is here that the book explains why she stays silent, and why she changes.
What Marcus Says
Eleanor goes off to Yemen for a month. A little later, Marcus tells Mary the truth. On the night Nancy died, he followed his father to the river, and a fight broke out. Howard’s punch hit Nancy, and then Marcus pushed her, and she fell and hit her head.
Mary comforts him, and promises that none of it is his fault.
Howard’s Death
That night, Mary burns the envelope, the Polaroid and the letter, and gives Howard painkillers, a few at a time, until he has taken far too many. She tells him she knows what he did, and he swallows them.
In the morning, he is dead. She tells the paramedics and the police it was an accident, and everyone believes her.
The Last Page
Mary rings Eleanor, who comes at once. They sit in Mary’s kitchen. Eleanor shows her the box from Irena, and says that Nancy, Irena and now Howard feel like a run of bad luck.
Mary says Robert did not kill Nancy, and Eleanor says yes. They decide to put their sorrow and guilt in the box, and live without perfection. Eleanor says, let’s be imperfect women together.
Quick Recap
So, in short: Nancy dies after a fight she did not start. Eleanor drifts into a relationship with her friend’s widower, and loses her neighbour. Mary finds out and takes her own revenge. The book ends with two women choosing to forgive themselves.
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