My book starts forty years ago, in the hospital service in England where I met Christine. After what should have been a first date, I was left to play the part of her knight in shining armour, with news of her unwanted pregnancy, and her absentee Boyfriend. However, we were very soon living together. Her boyfriend reappears and she leaves me, it lasts a few weeks and she is back with me. She meets my parents and she is instantly part of our family. I meet her parents and she leaves me. So after an on again off again relationship fueled in part by her parents, we marry. As Christine starts to feel safe, she admits to herself and opens up to me about the abuse she had suffered as a child. At the same time, she starts to reveal her confusion over her own sexuality.
When the chance occurs, we move to Canada, a move driven by Christine, where freed by the distance from her parents she begins to discover herself. But after almost twelve years of marriage when Christine receives an invitation to her father’s birthday, she leaves me, thus avoiding the trip to see her parents. There was no closure for me, and I never doubted that she would be back again, but after two requests from her to get back together, attempts that lasted about eight hours each time she was gone. Many years later Christine has moved back to England, and when she hears of my plans to move back to England, she invites me to come and share her flat. “We both know that is where we want to end up,” she told me.