You want to know what the worst thing is? It's not the embarrassment, or the looks on people's faces when I tell them what happened. It isn't the pain of him not being there - loneliness is manageable. The worst thing is not knowing why. When Justin walks out on Alice on their honeymoon, with no explanation apart from a cryptic note, Alice is left...
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.