LITMIR.BIZ

      I dedicate this book to my wonderful editor, Bryony Green,

      who has held my hand, uncomplainingly, through more

      than twenty books. She has saved a book gone wrong

      with ‘Perhaps if you …’ We have agonised over titles,

      dined in New York, celebrated an award at the Ritz and

      danced the night away in Washington. It’s been great.

      CHAPTER ONE

       ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS

       My bag is packed, my flight booked. While my students are all flapping about in a last minute panic about coursework that needs to be handed to their new teacher in the first week of term, I’ll be getting to grips with the rush hour in Rome, first day nerves and life in a foreign language.

       If they think that because I’ll be surrounded by art, culture, high fashion and endless sunshine, I’ve got the best deal, well, they may be right. At the moment I’m only concerned about where I’m going to live, how different this new school will be from Maybridge and whether my new students like me.

       Watch this space …

      ‘I’VE got a new job, Lex. In Rome.’

      ‘You’re leaving Maybridge High? The “world’s most perfect job”?’

      Sarah Gratton had been doing a fine job of convincing her colleagues that she couldn’t wait to get on that plane. Actually, that part was true, but it was more escape than adventure and she should have known that her great-grandfather would see right through a smile that was making her face ache.

      He might be rising ninety but he walked into town each morning to pick up his newspaper, and his brain was still sharp enough to do The Times crossword in ten minutes flat.

      ‘Tom was so popular, the kids loved him.’ Her thumb automatically moved to fiddle with the ring that was no longer there. ‘I feel as if everyone blames me for him leaving.’

      ‘He’s the one who cheated, Sarah. If you give up the job you love, you lose twice.’

      ‘He didn’t cheat.’

      Didn’t cheat. Didn’t lie. Didn’t pretend. He was incapable of that. He’d told her that he still loved her, but that he’d fallen in love with someone else.

      He’d told her at the beginning of the half term holiday, giving her a whole week before she had to walk into the staff room. Face everyone.

      What he hadn’t told her was that he’d resigned, taken a job she knew he’d hate at the sports centre in Melchester.

      Until then it hadn’t been real.

      She’d heard the words but hadn’t been able to take them in. Had convinced herself that when she turned up in the staffroom on Monday morning everything would be as it should be. Back to normal.

      But he hadn’t been there.

      He’d had time to think it through, to accept that working together in the goldfish bowl of school would be impossible. He was the one who’d sacrificed the job that was his life. That was how much he loved her.

      How much he was in love with someone else.

      She’d worked really hard to be worthy of that sacrifice. To think of her students when all she wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and bawl her eyes out.

      She’d cleaned every trace of him out of her flat so that she wouldn’t keep tripping over the memories. Put away photographs. Stopped going to the places where they’d hung out with their friends.

      But she couldn’t scrub him out of school.

      He was an invisible presence in the photographs of the teams he’d coached to glory. In the whiff of steaming boys, the clatter of their boots as they came in from the cricket field. In the sound of a whistle on the sports field that had once linked her to him like an invisible thread, but now went through her like a knife.

      ‘Besides,’

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