Terry and Maria Fielding have been married for eight years.
He in advertising, with a career going down hill, she in Credit Control, a rising
star.
Faced with his growing inadequacies in both his childless marriage and his job,
coupled with the threat of possible redundancy, Terry becomes increasingly reluctant
to go home, and to escape, he takes refuge in a Soho Club. Here he meets the
exciting and enigmatic Rosina, a hostess with whom he becomes totally fascinated
and who he comes to believe, will be his salvation. But Rosina is obsessed with
secrets in her own past and can or does she want to provide the understanding
and support Terry needs as he clings desperately to his sanity.
As Maria comes to understand that her promotion carries a price, and as she struggles to understand Terry's silences, she devotes more and more of her time to Lisa, her sisters child, to combat her growing feelings of isolation.
Conscious of guilt over their childless marriage, and unable to communicate with Maria, Terry becomes more inward as he wrestles with a terrible secret in his past that he thought he had buried, but that now fills his every waking hour.
Written from both points of view, with vivid glimpses into the
past, this is a powerful story of two people trapped in normality with abnormality
creeping closer and closer each day.
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Lizzie Hayes
Sarah Diamond is the author of The Beach Road