Into the Water

by Paula Hawkins

‘I know you think it’s wrong,’ she said, ‘that I shouldn’t have been with him. I get that. But I loved him, Lenie. I still do. He was everything to me. I can’t have him hurt, I just can’t. I couldn’t bear it. Please don’t do anything that would hurt him.

‘I have all her things. Her clothes, her books, her music. The pictures she treasured. I know her friends, and the people she admired, I know what she loved. But that wasn’t her. Because I didn’t know who she loved. She had a life – a whole life – that I didn’t know about. The most important part of her, I didn’t know.’

wondering about the ways in which Mark Henderson was bad, wondering whether he’d managed to convince himself that being in love absolved him.

‘Yes, it is. It’s like when someone has an affair, why does the wife always hate the other woman? Why doesn’t she hate her husband? He’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the one who swore to love her and keep her and whatever for ever and ever. Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?’