This novel fixes an unflinching eye on the nearly perfect marriage of Flora and Simon Beaufort at the moment it goes haplessly awry.Of course, none of it would have happened if Flora had not taken her three children to France on a holiday and left her husband behind in their comfortable London home. Or if Simon, a beleaguered TV director, had not visited a cool, blond, thirtyish accountant named Gillian. Or if Lydia Faraday had not spotted Simon and Gillian cocooned in conspicuous intimacy at a crowded brasserie. Or if the lapsed Christian Flora had not sensed an emptiness in her life and identified the want in her soul as a yearning to believe.So it happens. Simon succumbs to the fruits of fleshly temptation. Flora heeds the cry of her reawakened faith. But neither of them can escape the revelation that stands beyond their excuses and candor. Read Less