THE LOVE OF MY LIFE BOOK CLUB KIT

BOOK CLUB KIT

FOR YO U R B O O K C L UB, A M E S S AG E F RO M A U T H OR R O SIE WA L SH

From the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted comes a love story wrapped in a mystery: an up-all-night page-turner with a dark secret at its core “I have held you every night for ten years and I didn’t even know your name.”

Emma loves her husband, Leo, and their young daughter, Ruby: she’d do anything for them. But almost everything she’s told them about herself is a lie.

And she might have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job.

Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best—researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real.

When the very darkest moments of Emma’s past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was.

But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.

“Rosie Walsh’s The Love of My Life is my favorite kind of thriller— gripping, heartbreaking, and impossible to put down.”

—LAURA DAVE, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me

“What do you do when you find out everything your wife ever told you about herself is a lie? Allow Rosie Walsh’s love story slash mystery, The Love of My Life, to explain.” —MARIE CLAIRE

Prologue

W

e walked north, separated from the main sweep of the beach by kelp beds and rippling tidepools. The sea was a field of

white crests and the few clouds in the sky moved fast, throwing spiral shadows across the sand.

It felt good for the two of us to be here, in this liminal place where the land shelved into the sea. This realm wasn’t ours. It belonged to the sea stars and limpets, the anemones and hermit crabs. Nobody noticed our togetherness; nobody cared.

It rained for a while and we sat in a shack hidden in the dunes, eating sandwiches. There were middens of dried sheep droppings in the corners and the rain drummed on the roof like gunfire. It was the

perfect sanctuary. A place just for us.

We talked easily, as weather systems tore back and forth across the beach below. In my heart, hope grew.

We spotted the crab skeleton at the far end of the beach, soon after our picnic lunch. Medium-sized, dead, alone on the strandline amid deposits of driftwood and dried spiral wrack. There were razorshell fragments stuck to its abdomen, a bleached twist of trawler net hooked around a lifeless antenna, and peculiar, signal-red spots on its body and claws.

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Tired now, I sat down to examine it properly. Four distinct spines crossed its carapace. Its claws were covered in bristles.

I looked into its unseeing eyes, trying to imagine where it might have traveled from. I’d read that crabs rafted long-distance on all sorts of vessels—pieces of plastic, hunks of seaweed, even the barnacled hulls of cargo ships. For all I knew this creature could have traveled from Polynesia, surviving thousands of miles just for the chance to die on a Northumbrian beach.

I should take some photographs. My tutors would know what it was.

But as I reached into my bag for my camera, my vision took a sudden pitch. Light-headedness dropped like marine fog and I had to stay still, hunched over, until it passed.

“Low blood pressure,” I said, when I was able to straighten up. “Had it since I was a kid.”

We turned back to the crab. I got up onto hands and knees and photographed it from every angle.

The dizziness returned as I put my camera away, although this time it ebbed and flowed, imitating the waves. Pain was beginning to gather in my back, accompanied by a darker, more powerful sensation near my ribs. I knelt down again, tucking my hands in my lap, and the dizziness billowed.

I counted to ten. Murmured words of concern, laced with fear, tumbled around above my head. The wind changed direction.

When I finally opened my eyes, there was blood on my hand.

I looked carefully. It was unmistakably blood. Fresh, wet, across my right palm.

“It’s fine,” I heard myself say. “Nothing to worry about.”

Panic rolled in with the tide.

4

ONE

Leo

H

er eyelashes are often wet when she wakes, as if she’s been swimming in a sea of sad dreams. “It’s just some sleep-related thing,”

she’s always said. “I never have nightmares.” After a fathomless yawn she’ll wipe her eyes and slip out of bed to check Ruby is alive and breathing. It’s a habit she’s been unable to break, even though Ruby’s three.

“Leo!” she’ll say, when she gets back. “Wake up! Kiss me!”

Moments will pass, as I slide into day from the slow-moving depths.

Dawn will spread from the east in amber shadows and we will burrow in close to each other, Emma talking almost nonstop—although from time to time she will pause, midstream, to kiss me. At 6:45 we will check Wikideaths for overnight passings, then at 7:00 she will break wind, blaming the sound on a moped out in the road.

I can’t remember how far into our relationship it was when she started doing this: not far enough, probably. But she would have known that I was on board, by then, that I was no more likely to swim back to the shore than I was to grow wings and fly there.

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If our daughter hasn’t climbed into our bed by that time, we climb into hers. Her room is sweet and hot, and our early-morning conversations about Duck are among the happiest moments my heart knows.

Duck, whom she clutches tightly to herself all night, is credited with incredible nocturnal adventures.

Normally I’ll dress Ruby while Emma “goes down to make breakfast,” although most days she’ll get sidetracked by marine data collected overnight in her lab, and it’s Ruby and me who’ll sort out the food. My wife was forty minutes late for our wedding because she’d stopped to photograph the tidal strandlines at Restronguet Creek in her wedding dress. Nobody, except the registrar, was surprised.

Emma’s an intertidal ecologist, which means she studies the places and creatures that are submerged at high tide and exposed at low. The most miraculous and exciting ecosystem on Earth, she says: she’s been rockpooling since she was a young girl; it’s in her blood. Her main research interest is crabs, but I believe most crustaceans are fair game.

Right now she’s got a bunch of little guys called Hemigrapsus takanoi in special sea-water tanks at work. I know they’re an invasive species and that she’s looking at some specific morphology she’s been trying to pin down for years, but that’s as much as I’m able to understand. Less than a third of the words biologists use can be understood by the average human; getting trapped in a group of them at a party is a nightmare.

Emma is singing to John Keats when Ruby and I arrive in the kitchen this morning, the sun jagging across the worktops and our cereal hard6

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ening in bowls. Her laptop, which displays a page of mind-boggling words and squiggles, plays a track called “Killermuffin.” When we rescued John Keats from the dog shelter they told us that jungle at a low volume soothed his nerves, and so it has become the soundtrack to our lives. I’m used to it now, but it took a while.

I stand in the doorway with Ruby perched on my hip, watching my wife singing tunelessly to the dog. In spite of a bunch of musicians in Emma’s ancestry she is incapable of singing even “Happy Birthday” in tune, but this has never stopped her. It’s one of many things I love about my wife.

She catches sight of us and dances over, still singing appallingly.

“My favorites!” she says, kissing us both and extracting Ruby from my arms. She whirls off with our daughter and the dreadful singing gets louder.

Ruby knows Mummy’s been ill; she has seen her lose her hair thanks to the special medicine she gets at hospital, but she thinks Emma’s better now. The truth of the matter is, we don’t know. Emma had her post-treatment PET scan yesterday and an appointment to discuss the results has been booked for next week. We are hopeful, we are frightened. Neither of us is sleeping well.

After a brief stint dancing with her mother, Duck whirling around their heads, Ruby wriggles off to take care of some urgent business.

“Come back!” Emma cries. “I want to cuddle you!”

“I’m too busy,” Ruby says, regretfully. Then: “Hi,” she whispers, to the plant she’s looking after for nursery. “I’m going to give you a drink.”

“Anything?” I ask, nodding at the computer. Emma presented a BBC wildlife series a few years back and continues to receive messages 7

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from weird men, even though she hasn’t been on telly since. But her series was repeated recently, and as a result the messages have increased. Normally, we laugh at them, but last night she admitted she’s had some more disturbing ones of late.

“A couple more. One tame, one less so. But I’ve blocked him.”

I watch her carefully as she fills our water glasses, but she doesn’t seem bothered. I think it’s fair to say I mind about these messages a lot more than she does. I’ve tried to get her to shut down her public Facebook page, but she won’t. People apparently still post about wildlife they’ve been tracking, and she’s not willing to close the resource down “simply because of a few lonely men.”

I hope they are just lonely.

“I love your piece on Kenneth Delwych,” Emma tells me, keeping an eye on Ruby, who’s climbing up to the sink with her watering can. My newspaper is on the table with the obituaries page open.

I go over to John Keats and fold one of his flappy silken ears around my finger, waiting for the but. The dog smells of biscuits and singed fur after a recent encounter with the iron.

“But?” I prompt.

She stops, caught out. “No but.”

“Oh, Emma. Come off it.”

After a moment, she laughs. “Fine. I do love it, but the female priest is the real showstopper. Hey, Ruby, that’s enough water.”

John Keats sighs deeply as I lean over to study my articles. Kenneth Delwych, a peer famed for the legendary orgies he hosted at his Sussex vineyard, is sharing the obituaries page with a Bomber Command navigator and a female priest who had a heart attack during a wedding ceremony last weekend. “You’re at your best when you’re completely 8

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deadpan,” Emma says. She puts bread in the toaster. “That actor last week—the Scottish one, what was his name? Ruby, please don’t drown the thing . . .”

“David Baillie?”

“David Baillie. Yes. Perfection.”

I reread my Kenneth Delwych piece while Emma deals with the inevitable overflow of water and soil from Ruby’s plant. She’s right, of course. The female priest, with her far shorter obit, reads better.

Unfortunately, Emma’s often right. My editor, who, I suspect, is in love with my wife, often jokes that he’d sack me and hire her if she ever decided to quit marine biology. I actually find this quite offensive, because unless he’s secretly read her scientific articles, he has only one piece she wrote for the Huffington Post to go on.

Emma is a research fellow at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, which takes up two days of her week, then she comes back to us in London to teach estuarine conservation at UCL. She is an excellent writer, with instincts frequently better than mine, and she really does enjoy cruising Wikideaths, but this has more to do with her love of a good story than any interest in stealing my job.

Ruby and John Keats go out into the garden, where the sun steals through gaps in next door’s sycamore, spotting our tiny lawn with gold. Smells of an early city summer roll through the door: still-glossy grass, honeysuckle, heating tarmac.

I try to rehydrate our cereal, while outside the dog runs around our pond, barking. It’s alive with baby frogs at the moment, which he seems to find unacceptable. “John Keats, will you be quiet?” Emma asks, from the doorway. The dog takes no notice. “We have neighbors.”

“JOHN!” Ruby yells. “WE HAVE NEIGHBORS!” 9

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“Shhh, Ruby . . .”

I find some spoons and take our breakfast out to the garden.

“Sorry,” Emma says, holding the door open for me. “Me and my unsolicited opinions on your work. It must be annoying.”

“It is.” We sit at the garden table, still bobbled with dew. “But you’re mostly polite. The main problem is that you’re often right.”

She smiles. “I think you’re a brilliant writer, Leo. I read your obits before I even open my work e-mails in the morning.”

“Hmmm.” I keep an eye on Ruby, who’s just a bit too close to the pond.

“I do! Your writing is one of your sexiest assets.”

“Oh, Emma, seriously, stop it.”

Emma has a spoonful of cereal. “Actually, I’m not joking. You’re the best writer on that desk. Period.”

Embarrassingly, I can’t stop myself from beaming. “Thank you,” I say, eventually, because I know she means it. “But you’re still annoying.”

She sighs. “Oh, I know.”

“For a whole host of reasons,” I add, and she can’t help laughing.

“You have far too many opinions on far too many things.”

She slips her hand across the table and squeezes my thumb, and tells me I am her favorite, and I find myself laughing, too—and that is our rhythm. That is us. We have been married seven years; together nearly ten, and I know every part of her.

I think it was Kennedy who said we are tied to the ocean—that when we return to it, for sport or leisure or somesuch, we are returning to 10

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the place from whence we came. That’s how I feel about us. To be near to my wife, to Emma, is to return to source.

So when I learn, in the days following this morning—this innocent, commonplace morning, with dogs and frogs and coffee and dead priests—that I know nothing of this woman, it will break me.

11

© Ve

rity Rivers

A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H R O SIE WA L SH, A U TH O R O F T H E L O V E OF MY LIFE

The Love of My Life follows Leo, an obituary writer who starts writing his wife Emma’s obit after a brush with cancer, only to discover that she is not who she says she is. In the process of trying to uncover the truth, he discovers some of the darkest parts of both of their pasts until their present-day love story explodes over the course of forty-eight very dramatic hours. How did the idea for this story come to you?

At the beginning—roughly eight years ago—I knew only that I wanted to write a novel about an obituary wwriter. This was following dinner with a poet who was writing an advance obituary for another poet he greatly revered.

I was fascinated by this. Did the elderly poet know his obituary was being written? How did that feel? How did the young poet approach him when asking questions? I started reading about obituary writers and discovered a thriving community of obit folk around the world: academics, journalists, enthusiastic amateurs, thinkers, and—as with most things—a healthy collection of selfconfessed nerds. I read their books, I followed their tweets, I called them on the phone. I fell in love with their world. I just lacked an idea.

The novel took on many guises in the years that followed—a modern love story, a Welsh farce (I’m confident I’ve invented this genre), a dark subliterary allegory, to name but a few; all rejected by my agent. Finally, as I came to the end of writing Ghosted, an idea came to mind: An obituary writer starts

researching his wife, only to discover she’s a complete stranger.

As a general rule, I don’t scribble ideas down on the spot; I trust that the good ones will resurface when they’re meant to. But that one was committed immediately to my notebook and then phoned through to my agent. We both agreed it was The One. From that point, the questions came thick and fast. And this, I’ve come to realize, is where I find my creative energy: writing novels that ask questions of my readers. What would they do in Leo’s shoes? What would they say? And, above all, could they ever forgive? Not just the years of lies and deception but the basic fact of what Emma did; the reality of who she is. These moral dilemmas were at the center of each and every plot decision I made. Because, even within the context of deep, reciprocal love, I think Emma’s past—the horrifying reality of it—would challenge most of us.

Two years of reading and thinking followed. By this point I knew Leo and Emma, Jeremy and Janice quite well, and the story began to reveal itself to me. But it was a constant game of give-and-take; a balancing of deep human darkness with light. Even the draft that I believed to be final had to be significantly revised; it was too hard going. Details, some major, were altered right up until the manuscript went off to the printers, but the headline never changed. In my heart, I didn’t know what I’d do if I found myself in Leo’s situation, and that’s why I had to write this book.

The Love of My Life looks at motherhood from many different points of view.

You had your second child while writing the book. What was the experience like writing about these issues, as you were adjusting to being a mother of two?

Some of the darkest times of my life spanned the writing of this book. There were two bouts of viral meningitis, followed by a very difficult pregnancy and some reignited trauma from the birth of my first child. Ghosted had been a global bestseller—a genuine shock and, of course, a delight—but the knock-on effects on my expectations of myself, and confidence as a writer, were substantial. And then, of course, there was the spectre of COVID-19. At the beginning of that first, terrifying lockdown, when nobody had any idea what to do, and nobody trusted anyone else, I was heavily pregnant, had just lost all childcare for my son, and—I’ll be honest—I was a wreck. I stopped answering emails or phone calls; I went into basic survival.

What’s interesting, though, was that even in my toughest moments, I was writing. And not once did I consider the many obvious parallels between me

and Emma—the darkness that strangled her attempts to be a mother; to be a human being.

I do think it helped for me to be feeling the same despair and overwhelm that Emma feels; that winter in her heart. Certainly, when I read back through the manuscript now, I see so many of the bleak moments of my own time and how they helped me bring hers to life.

Many couples discover, years into their relationship, that certain elements of their partners’ lives or personalities were not what they originally thought, and yet love can endure. Is this an aspect of relationships you wanted to explore?

I think the unwelcome surprises we get within our relationships are generally tied to the gradual erosion of our curated selves. We become too comfortable, too tired, too honest to play roles any longer. But human reality can be disappointing to anyone invested in dreams. Sometimes the disappointment can be terminal. You’re not the man I thought you were. You’re not the woman I fell in love with.

When I met my partner, I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. dancing tango in Buenos Aires. I am not someone who stays out until 4:00 a.m. doing anything, and it didn’t take long for me to revert to type. I still don’t know if my partner finds that disappointing but he’s stuck around. On a more serious level, though, there are many things we’ve gradually failed to keep up as the years have passed. Some of those have required hard work on both our parts—they haven’t made for an easy ride. I think this is normal.

But what’s going on for Leo and Emma is far more weighty: she is, quite literally, not who she says she is. I’m not sure many people have had that particular relationship experience—at least, not within long-term relationships.

Leo’s uncovering of her real identity raises the question of how much we can forgive; the extent to which we can allow a different person to inhabit the template we’ve held for our spouse. It makes me think of a mother who learns that her son has murdered someone. What does she do with that information?

Will she ever stop loving him? How? I don’t think we have much choice when it comes to loving our children. But intimate relationships are different. We can and do walk away.

Did you do any special research for the book?

It’s quite possible that I spent more time researching than I did writing this book. Almost every aspect of the story lay beyond the parameters of my

existing knowledge: I thought the research would never end! As ever, though, I found it all fascinating.

I spent time in the obits department at the The Telegraph in London, which I loved. They apologized many times for how “boring” it was; how there wasn’t much for me to see. But a writer with a notebook in hand is just as interested in the sounds of the newsroom floor as they are the eccentric dead aristocrat that one of the obituarists is writing up. Every conversation I’ve had with someone who works in the realm of obituary, end of life, in the last few years, has brought color and texture to a subject matter most of us avoid.

Similarly, I found the marine-biology research to be incredibly stimulating— although, as Leo says at the beginning of the novel—most of the words biologists use are unintelligible to the common man. I often, and with great embarrassment, had to go back to the scientists who helped me, asking them to explain something again in even simpler terms. And then simpler still. Part of the problem with science, I came to realize, is that there’s only a certain extent to which you can simplify it.

Additionally, I spent many hours on the phone and email with people who work in the adoption system, in social services, in law enforcement, in perinatal psychiatric care, in psychology and psychotherapy. I read dense scientific journals and more than forty books, I visited death cafes, I endlessly hounded hematologists and other medical professionals for storylines that didn’t even make it. I did virtual walkthroughs of the BBC and had a FaceTime video tour of my old local playpark in Highbury during lockdown. But, as always, it’s the conversations with people who’ve been through what Emma and Leo have been through that have really brought this book to life. The survivors of Leo and Emma’s traumas. Their courage in talking to me, a complete stranger, who could have turned their stories into something abhorrent, was humbling.

Without them, this book would not have been viable.

The Love of My Life blends romance and suspense with a powerful emotional story touching on issues like guilt, love, identity, memory, forgiveness, mental health, and motherhood. It’s an incredible balancing act. What do you most hope readers will take away from this story?

While my hope is that readers will be hooked in by Leo’s increasingly frantic search for his wife’s true identity, I think this is really a story about the shape, the size, and the durability of love between two people—what it can withstand, how much of it is shaped by stories, whether it can take a wholesale change in

direction. For Emma, nothing about her relationship or feelings for Leo changes when he finds out who she is; for Leo, everything has changed. Can he hold this new information? Is there enough space in their years of love and trust for these new stories to be accommodated?

Leo’s career as an obituary writer and Emma’s as a marine biologist share a few similarities: both involve looking at the scope of someone’s or something’s life and existence to gain an understanding of who or what it is—and both fundamentally require searching for answers. Each career deals with life and death, from a species’ start to its end. Are there other ways in which the relationship between life and death impact Emma and Leo? I think what links them in this particular arena is that, while they’re both comfortable with life and death in the professional arena, their emotional relationships with these basic facts of human existence are challenged by the traumas they’ve both suffered. Both lost their mothers soon after birth, Emma then lost her father, and, emotionally at least, Leo felt like he’d lost his adoptive parents, too. Thus, they have no internal space to hold death in their own lives.

I think this deep vulnerability is partly what binds them together emotionally.

For both, when they meet, there’s a sense of relief—a sense of finally having found a space of belonging after years of feeling adrift.

Although very different from The Love of My Life in many ways, your debut novel, Ghosted, also deals with questions of truth and honesty. What pushes you as a writer to explore these topics so crucial to intimate human relationships?

I believe that, handled carefully, the emotional journey in a sudden loss of trust can make for every bit as compelling a read as the journey of someone caught up in a crime or any other storyline you might find in a thriller. And while I haven’t, thankfully, had this experience in my own relationship, I find it fascinating to try to imagine what I’d do if I did.

My partner recently asked me to message someone while he was driving, for example, and I found myself imagining what I’d do if I saw the name of a woman I didn’t know, with a message preview I didn’t like. Would I open it?

Would I ask him straightaway who she was? Would I tell myself it was innocent and try to bury it from my consciousness? And how much would I worry if I did stay silent? I don’t find it unreasonable that Leo’s initial reaction to the things he uncovers is not fight-or-flight but freeze. My hope is that each and every reader find themselves interrogating these questions as the story unfolds.

You expertly weave an intricate plot filled with deception, anxiety, and betrayal, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat right up until the final scene of the novel. Are there any writers from whom you get inspiration for plot structure and pacing?

Although I read widely, I’ve always made an effort to keep other writers’ work out of my consciousness when writing. It gets too messy; I either compare and despair or I realize I’ve written four chapters in someone else’s style. Often when I’m deep in a draft I can only read entirely unrelated work—memoir, for example, or, often, research material.

What were the biggest challenges you encountered in the writing of this novel? The biggest surprises?

The plot was by far my greatest challenge. Truth be told, I nearly gave up on this book, many times over. Were it not for the extensive calls of encouragement from my agents, who loved Leo and Emma from their very inception, it would never have seen light of day. And yet, now that I’ve finished it, I struggle to say why it was so hard, or what felt so wrong that I thought about giving up.

The biggest surprise was that, in the end, all it took was one Skype call with my writing partner to overcome the plot problem that I thought was the end! That’s the beauty of working with someone else. No matter what their exposure to your work in progress, they will never reach saturation like you, the author. They will always have creative space for new ideas. My partner, Deborah O’Donoghue, writes upmarket thrillers—she’s a literary writer, really, nothing like me—and yet she has a bone-level understanding of my work and an ability to find ways through that I so often lack. We spent hours together on this book. I couldn’t have done it without her.

Emma has built her career as a marine biologist studying the evolutionary intricacies of tide pool ecosystems, the expanding ways marine life adapts to environments, and her quest to find a very specific species of crab that she discovered once years ago on the Northumbrian coast. Her search for this crab plays out alongside key events throughout her life, and she’s unable to find it again until the very end. What do you see this yearslong, seemingly impossible journey to metaphorically represent?

I think we all have displacement activities. But Emma’s pain is so vast, so boundless, she needs something that physically takes her to another place, something that keeps her searching and hoping. I think it’s generally accepted that trauma continues to inhabit our bodies long after the event—this search

keeps her body moving; prevents her sitting with intolerable truths and memories. I think, also, that it’s probably a quest for control— a search for something she can ring-fence and manage. In a life that has been beset by uncontrollable calamity from the very moment of her birth, she longs for agency.

Equally, what Emma is doing is what scientists do, period. Their lives and minds are driven by the indomitable energy of inquiry. In every university in the world, scientists are interrogating every single thing we know, and I love that about them. Watching them at work and interviewing them has left me with huge appreciation for their tenacity and patience.

WARNING: THE BELOW TWO QUESTIONS GIVE SPOILERS TO THE PLOT Postpartum depression and psychosis are realities for many women that historically haven’t been discussed to the extent they should. Finally, though, some celebrities—Chrissy Teigen, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Adele, to name a few—are coming out with their stories of postpartum mental health struggles. You do an excellent job portraying how postpartum psychosis puts Emma in a very vulnerable position, complete with her distrust of herself and others, and how little agency she has. What inspired you to make this a central part of Emma’s story?

For a long time, I didn’t know what Emma was running from, or what she had done—only that it was about as dark as any one human can bear. The idea for the postnatal backstory finally came to me one night during a long conversation with an old friend, but it took me a while to fully commit to it.

I knew it was right for Emma, but I worried about how it might play out for readers. Women who’ve gone through this are understandably quite anxious about how it’s handled in written and filmed media, and I was wary of getting it wrong or causing pain. Above all, I didn’t want to sensationalize or trivialize.

One of my closest friends went through it, more than a decade ago, and I still remember the phone calls with her, at the height of her illness, as if they were yesterday. As a mother now, I felt more keenly than ever the sheer catastrophe of these psychiatric crises; the loss of the “precious time” that healthy parents talk about, the lingering trauma, the paranoid self-mistrust that never fully subsides. The watching of ourselves. Motherhood is hard enough without that bleak start. For this and many other reasons, it felt like a lot to be taking on. Thankfully, the feedback I’ve received from women and professionals in that community has been positive.

You write the novel in such a way that positions Janice and Emma at odds with each other, deftly peeling back layer after layer, revealing new clues about what truly transpired between them right up until the end of the novel. Although Janice’s decision to lie to Emma about what happened to her while in the postpartum psychiatric ward is unforgivable, she is still empathetic. What pushed you to write a character, who committed such an irrevocable action, that we ultimately still feel for? What do you hope readers take away?

It’s important to say, first of all, that I didn’t write that plot twist to make Emma more loveable or acceptable; I wasn’t trying to absolve her of sin. Mothers in postpartum psychosis have done what Emma believes she’s done; it’s part of the reason why the condition is almost always treated in secure inpatient facilities. Initially, I want readers to experience the same emotional journey as Leo when he discovers what she did. He loves Emma and, by that point, I hope the readers like her, too. So how do they feel now, knowing she tried to smother her baby? Do they understand? Do they forgive? Or is there a small part of them that cannot accept that this is something a mother could do, even in the grips of a grave psychiatric crisis?

The double twist of Janice’s betrayal came to me by accident, really. I was talking to another writer about Jeremy and Janice and had one of those light bulb moments that can completely change the fabric of a novel. There should be another lie concealed in the narrative, I realized—a great big bomb of a lie; a lie that not even Emma knows about. And that lie—that fundamental, unforgivable lie—should come from the “victim” in all of this, Janice Rothschild.

At the moment Emma receives this news, Charlie is sitting right there in her sitting room. She is looking straight at the son whose loss she has never come to terms with; the son who, she now knows, she could have brought up and loved as her own. I found this scene the hardest of all to write—harder, even, than the scenes during her psychosis—because of the sheer pain of what could have been. As a mother I find it almost unbearable.

And so, whenever I think about Emma—and I often think about my leading characters—all of them—I wonder how she’s dealing with this bombshell, now that she’s had some time to process it; if she’ll ever be able to make peace with what was taken from her. It’s not exactly a dark ending to the novel, but it’s not an easy one, either. Emma has a lot to come to terms with, and I hope it’s something readers are left thinking about themselves.

A RE CI P E F O R YO U R R E A D IN G PL EA SU R E A note from the author: My book club snack of choice is the humble fig roll, known on your side of the Atlantic as a Fig Newton. My dad introduced me to these at a young age and, for me, they’re perfection in a biscuit. They’re also Leo’s first choice of panic snack when he starts researching Emma’s life and begins to realize that something strange is going on.

FIG ROLLS This recipe originally appeared on smittenkitchen.com on April 11, 2018.

Deb Perelman adapted the recipe from BraveTart by Stella Parks.

SERVINGS: Supposed to be 32 cookies, but I got 44 TIME: 1 hour active, 1 hour to chill dough INGREDIENTS: Cookie • 10 tablespoons (140 grams or 5 ounces) unsalted butter, cold is fine, cut into small chunks • ½ cup (110 grams or 4 ounces) light brown sugar, gently packed • ½ plus 1⁄8 teaspoon baking soda • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt • 2 tablespoons (30 grams) honey or golden syrup • 1 tablespoon orange or apple juice • 1 large egg • 1 large egg yolk • 2¼ cups (295 grams or 10 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour Filling • 12 ounces (about 2½ cups) plump, sticky dried mission figs, stems trimmed • 1⁄₃ cup (100 grams or 3½ ounces) applesauce, any variety • 2 tablespoons orange or apple juice • ½ teaspoon orange zest

© Deb Perelman / Smitten Kitchen

DIRECTIONS: 1

Make the dough in a stand mixer: Combine butter, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, and honey in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat until fluffy, which will take up to 5 minutes; scrape the bowl down a few times to help it along. Add orange juice, then add the egg and yolks, beating between them, and continue beating until smooth. Reduce the speed to low and sprinkle in the flour, mixing until well combined.

Or make the dough in a food processor: Combine butter, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, and honey in the bowl of a food processor. Blend until fluffy, which will take a minute or two; scrape the bowl down a few times to help it along. Add orange juice, then add the egg and yolks, blending between them, and continue blending until smooth. Reduce the speed to low and sprinkle in the flour, pulsing until well combined.

2

Both methods: Scrape dough onto a piece of plastic and wrap it in a flat disc. Chill for 1 hour.

3

Meanwhile, make the filling: Cut the figs in half (although I skipped this because mine were so soft and it wasn’t a problem). Pulse with applesauce, orange juice, and zest in a food processor until roughly chopped, then process to a thick, smooth paste. Scrape the bowl and blade with a flexible spatula, then process a minute more to ensure absolutely no chunks remain. Transfer to a sturdy piping bag fitted with a ½-inch plain round tip if you have one, or just a sturdy freezer bag with a ½-inch opening snipped from the end (both methods worked for me) and set aside until needed, up to 24 hours.

the center of each portion. Use your bottom sheet of parchment as a sling to fold a long flap of dough over each strip, press it against the filling, then continue to use the parchment to roll the dough the rest of the way over. Dough will overlap a little.

This part will be terrifying no matter what, but take your time to loosen, slide a spatula underneath, and lift this log onto your prepared baking sheet. Did yours break?

One of mine did and I found if I pressed the broken parts back together, it “healed” pretty well in the oven. Gently press logs just a tiny bit to begin to flatten them into the traditional fig newton shape. Repeat with remaining strips of dough and filling.

All four bars should fit on a single sheet.

5

4

Assemble your cookies: Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll your cool dough between 2 large pieces of parchment paper to about a 15-inch square.

However, both times I made them, I couldn’t get mine this thin—what’s most important is that your dough is 15 inches wide; if it comes up a little short in the other direction, the cookies still work. If the dough has gotten too soft and wants to stick to the parchment, just slide it onto the back of a baking sheet and into the freezer for 2 to 3 minutes, after which it should be easy to peel off the top sheet.

Cut dough into four 3¼-inch strips.

Holding the bag at a 90-degree angle just above the surface of the dough, pipe a justshy-of-1-inch-wide tube of filling down

Bake: Until the bars are puffed and firm, without any significant browning, about 15 minutes. Immediately cut into 1-inch pieces with a sharp or serrated knife.

Let them fully cool on tray, then transfer them to an airtight container overnight to achieve the uniquely cakey texture. (If you eat them right away, they’ll seem a little dry.) Store for up to 1 week at room temperature or up to a month in the fridge. I found after the initial softening, my cookies did best at room temperature when the lid was ajar, or else they got too soft.

Do ahead: The dough can chilled for up to 1 week. If it chills for more than an hour, you should soften it at room temperature for 30 minutes before using it. The preserves can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks; bring to room temperature before using.

DI S C U S S I O N Q U EST IO N S 1.

In Emma and Leo we initially see a devoted couple with a deep and seemingly genuine connection. To what extent do you believe it is possible for a happy relationship to be founded on colossal untruths? Is it possible to love someone and not really know who they are?

2. This novel features betrayal, deceptions, and outright lies. Whose actions—or inactions— do you think were the most harmful, and why?

3. Emma’s postpartum psychosis places her in an extremely vulnerable position, which allows Janice to make a decision that changes the course of several lives. What do you think pushed Janice to make such a choice? Discuss.

4. Leo decides he wants to be with Emma even once he learns the full truth, despite her deceptions. Would you have made the same choice? Why or why not?

5. At times, Leo tends to put Emma on a pedestal. But when the truth finally comes out, she says to him, “Life made sense again, when I met you, Leo. I remembered why people wanted to live.” Do you think he has ever believed she loves and needs him every bit as much he loves and needs her?

6. The moment at which Emma finally meets her adult son is one of the most charged of her life, a longed-for event she had all but given up on. How do you think mother and son handle this moment? Do you feel hopeful for their emerging relationship at the end of the novel?

7. The crab Emma seeks throughout her career proves elusive until the very end. Do you think this is a metaphor? If so, for what?

8. The title of the book—The Love of My Life—implies that Emma has only one true love, but her circumstances throughout the novel indicate something very different. Who do you think is the “real” love of her life, or is there more than one?

R E AD M O RE B Y R O SIE WA L SH Seven perfect days. Then he disappeared. A love story with a secret at its heart.

MORE THAN A MILLION COPIES SOLD

When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect instantly and fall in love. To Sarah, it seems as though her life has finally begun. And it’s mutual: It’s as though Eddie has been waiting for her, too.

Sarah has never been so certain of anything. So when Eddie leaves for a longbooked vacation and promises to call from the airport, she has no cause to doubt him. But he doesn’t call.

Sarah’s friends tell her to forget about him, but she can’t. She knows something’s happened—there must be an explanation.

Minutes, days, weeks go by as Sarah becomes increasingly worried. But then she discovers she’s right. There is a reason for Eddie’s disappearance, and it’s the one thing they didn’t share with each other: the truth.

“I absolutely loved this book and didn’t want it to end.”

—LIANE MORIARTY, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies

“Gorgeous. Walsh has created such strong characters, and so much warmth.

The way she writes about love and longing is just beautiful.”

–JANE GREEN, New York Times bestselling author of The Sunshine Sisters

© Verity Rivers

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