Simon Kernick: Deadline

She'd lied to him before, but he chose to believe her this time. Perhaps it was easier that way.

'So, what now?' she asked, and there was an element of invitation in her hazel eyes.

He'd thought a lot about this these past couple of days, and hadn't known the answer until he'd arrived here today and seen Andrea as she should have been – happy, attractive and spirited.

'Well?'

'We do the same thing we did fifteen years ago, Andrea.' He looked her in the eyes and smiled. 'We part company.'

Her expression didn't change. 'Are you sure? I thought maybe there was still something there between us. Something that might be worth exploring.'

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, lingering just a second over her scent, wanting to hold her but not knowing where it would end if he did, before moving away.

'Good luck, Andrea,' he said.

The invitation remained in her eyes for another second, then faded as she accepted the inevitable.

'And to you, Mike, and to you.'

He turned and left her there, striding away purposefully, wishing perhaps that things could have been different – that Emma was his daughter, that Andrea genuinely loved him, that they could end up as the kind of happy family he and Mikaela had never had the chance to create. But knowing too that he'd made the right decision. It was time to make a clean break with the past, start looking towards the future.

And where better to start than with a twenty-eight year-old artist from St Ives with raven hair and a dirty laugh.

As he walked out on to Spaniards Road, he took out his mobile and called Jenny Byfleet, hoping that she was in a forgiving mood.

Simon Kernick lives near London and has two young children. His previous novel, Relentless, was selected as a Richard & Judy Summer Read.

The research for Simon Kernick's novels is what makes them so authentic. His extensive list of contacts in the police force has been built up over more than a decade. It includes long serving officers in Special Branch, the National Crime Squad (now SOCA), and the Anti-Terrorist Branch, all of whom have plenty of tales to tell.