Susan Lewis - One Minute Later

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Susan Lewis 2019

Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Jacket photograph © Reilika Landen /Arcangel Images

Susan Lewis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008286736

Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008286743

Version: 2019-08-20

In loving memory of

Jim Lynskey

The bravest and most inspiring

young man I know

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: Vivienne

Chapter Two: Shelley

Chapter Three: Vivienne

Chapter Four: Shelley

Chapter Five: Vivienne

Chapter Six: Shelley

Chapter Seven: Vivienne

Chapter Eight: Shelley

Chapter Nine: Vivienne

Chapter Ten: Shelley

Chapter Eleven: Vivienne

Chapter Twelve: Shelley

Chapter Thirteen: Vivienne

Chapter Fourteen: Vivienne

Chapter Fifteen: Vivienne

Chapter Sixteen: Shelley

Chapter Seventeen: Vivienne

Chapter Eighteen: Gina

Chapter Nineteen: Vivienne

Chapter Twenty: Vivienne

Chapter Twenty-One: Vivienne

Chapter Twenty-Two: Vivienne

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Susan Lewis

About the Publisher

The day started out so well.

It was sunny, warm – a welcome bonus for what had so far been a rainy April – with misty slats of sunlight streaming through the partially open plantation shutters. The delicious aroma of fresh coffee and buttery croissants floated up from Max’s café next door, enticing her further into the day.

Vivienne Shager stretched luxuriously, her taut, lithe body unravelling its impressive length from the contours of sleep as her mind made a happy reconnect with the world and what it had in store on this glorious work-free day.

It was hard to believe that four full weeks had passed since she and the GaLs – Girls at Law – had run – and completed – an entire marathon to raise funds for the charity Heads Together. So much had happened in that time – mostly work related – but she’d also had an irritating bug that kept coming and going, trying to lay her low, but never quite succeeding. However, she was feeling pretty good today, she soon realized. This was a huge relief, for she and the GaLs were planning some serious celebration of their fund-raising efforts. The day was exclusively theirs; partners, spouses, offspring, parents, bosses and colleagues had been given notice that they’d have to manage without the key women in their lives from midday until said women were ready to tip in the direction of home.

For Vivi there was less of a problem on the family front, since she had no children and her partner, Greg, was going to Lord’s for the day. Her mother fortunately didn’t live anywhere close by. On the work front, her immediate boss, Trudy Mack-Silver, was one of the GaLs, so no difficulties there. This wasn’t to say that Vivienne didn’t have a mountain of work to get through; being a senior member of the in-house legal team at FAberlin Investments meant her desk and inbox were always crammed with issues needing urgent attention. Over time she’d learned how to prioritize the ceaseless flow of demands, though many of them saw her labouring late into the evenings and often over entire weekends. She didn’t mind. She loved her job, and even liked many of the giant corporation’s upper-management team. They could be tough, bad-tempered, inconsiderate and in some cases offensively sexist, but in times of crisis she watched closely, spoke confidently, and managed to learn a lot from those whose jobs she had in her sights.

‘You give great kickback,’ Trudy often told her following an intense negotiation or fiery confrontation. ‘They respect you for it. It makes them listen and, provided you don’t go wrong, you could be heading up the entire legal team by the time you’re thirty.’ Trudy didn’t have a problem with this, because she had no such ambitions for herself. She was happy to stay at the level she’d already attained, since it allowed her time to be an at-home-most-evenings wife to Bruno, and available-for-school-runs mum to Nick and Dean.

The other important thing about today was the fact that it was Vivi’s twenty-seventh birthday, another reason the GaLs – all graduates of LSE law school – had decided that this should be the marathon reunion day. Combining occasions was something they often did; being so busy with their careers it was the only way to make sure nothing got overlooked.

Throwing back the pale blue striped duvet, Vivi stood as tall as her willowy five foot nine inches allowed, arched her long back and gave a lazy side-to-side twist to stretch out her waist. Since ending the intense pre-marathon training her body had softened slightly, making it, according to Greg, more feminine and curvy, and way sexier. He had a thing about large women, which made his attraction to her a bit of a mystery, given how slender she was. However, they’d been seeing one another for several months, non-exclusively, so their friends weren’t living in daily expectation of some significant news. A baby. A wedding. Or perhaps something as simple as moving in together.

Despite their casual relationship, Vivi had to admit that he was a bit of a dreamboat in his way, sporty, witty, fiercely intelligent and very well connected in the financial world, thanks to his gentrified family and their historic ties to the City. When he spoke it was immediately evident that he came from privileged pastures; however, Vivienne strongly doubted that he gave a single thought to the relative ordinariness of her own roots. He wasn’t a snob, or not that she’d ever noticed. Nonetheless, she’d never taken him home to meet her family, who still lived in the hopelessly unsophisticated coastal town that Vivi had called home for the first eighteen years of her life.

She’d moved on since uni, had redefined her focus, and was part of another world that could hardly be more different from the simplicity of her early years. Not that she had changed in character, for she was still the same upbeat and optimistic Vivi that her beloved grandpa used to call Vivi-vacious. This nickname came from her love of life and people, especially him and NanaBella, which was what she used to call her grandma on account of her name being Bella. Vivi also adored her younger brother, nineteen-year-old Mark, and there was no doubt that she loved her mother with all her heart, and knew that her mother felt the same about her. However, their relationship was the most complicated and frustrating part of Vivienne’s world, which was why she didn’t often go home. She’d spent too many years trying to unlock the closed doors in her mother’s heart and unravel the secrets Gina had never shared, and now all Vivienne wanted was to avoid the confusing and conflicting emotions she always came away with after spending time with her mother.