Merrion Palmer was Judge Guy Stockdale's mistress. His Honour's totty, as the Clerk to the Court so succinctly put it. Guy had been having an affair with her for seven years, and neither Laura, his wife of forty years, nor his two grown-up sons, knew anything about her.
They enjoyed a blissful, uncomplicated relationship in stolen moments in Merrion's Bayswater flat, but to the rest of the world Guy was the model husband, father and grandfather. Now the time had come for Guy to move on. Conscious of the passing years, of the wasted opportunities, he didn't want to keep Merrion a secret any more. He wanted to share her with his family, with the world. He wanted, dammit, to marry her. And he was quite unprepared for the storm which followed.