THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A haunting, tender portrait of a woman forced to choose between her duty as a wife and her instinct as a mother...

Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper steps off a steamer in Ceylon, Sri Lanka full of optimism, eager to join her new husband. But the man who greets her at the tea plantation is not the same one she fell in love with in London.

Distant and brooding, Laurence spends long days wrapped up in his work, leaving his young bride to explore alone. It's a place filled with clues to the past - locked doors, a yellowed wedding dress in a dusty trunk, an overgrown grave, far too small for an adult...

Gwen soon falls pregnant and her husband is overjoyed, but she has little time to celebrate. In the delivery room the new mother is faced with a terrible choice. When the time comes, how will her husband ever understand what she has done?

'A truly absorbing book' Reader Review

'So many twists and turns. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next' Reader Review

'It takes you continuously into new places' Reader Review

'The writer creates the scene with such colour' Reader Review