She knows he will be a good husband, though her feelings for him are not the same as she had for James. Constance had been heartbroken, but after slowly recovering had agreed to marry Trenchard. though no body was ever found, and nobody could explain why he should have done so. A polite, well-dressed man appears outside the garden gate, claiming to be Sir James Davenall, to whom Constance had been engaged eleven years earlier. Everyone had been waiting eagerly for the planned marriage - but one day, with no warning, James had disappeared without trace, and was believed to have committed suicide. An hour was all it took for ten years to overtake them'. But, only an hour later, his life, 'and that of every occupant of The Limes, St John's Wood, had changed utterly - and forever.

Mother and daughter have gone inside, and William is enjoying the quiet satisfaction of a happy domestic life. William Trenchard and his wife Constance have spent a peaceful afternoon in the garden with their little daughter Patience. It was over 20 hours long, and it was less than two hours from the end when you finally found out whether the protagonist was the real deal or not. Anyway, I spotted this on Audible, brilliantly read by Michael Kitchen, embarked on it sometime in April, and have only just finished it. Twenty-eight novels after his 1986 debut Past Caring, he's still writing, but I'd more or less forgotten about him, and can't remember what reminded me how much I used to enjoy his work. I first discovered his intelligent, twisty historical mystery novels in the mid-nineties, and read a number of them, though apparently this one passed me by. A man comes back from the dead - or does he? That's the theme of Painting the Darkness, Robert Goddard's third novel, published in 1989.

Painting the darkness by robert goddard