The Ring
Kris Beckett
ISBN 9781916919334
 
Hillary Fletcher’s twenty-five-year-old marriage to her faithless husband, Roderick, is blighted by a discovery: a diamond ring. Having witnessed him purchasing the ring, she at first imagines it to be his gift for her, but is then confused when she sees it on the finger of her best friend, Faith. Which is when she realises that her long-standing friend is yet another of his conquests, and is devastated at this betrayal by the one woman she had trusted for most of her life.

Though shocked, she reluctantly decides to suffer this particular betrayal in silence – as she has borne so many of Roderick’s affairs. Her reluctance to rock the boat, however, damages her more than she’s prepared to admit. She imagines that this revelation is the worst that could happen, but is totally unprepared for the shock of discovering the full implications of how this diamond ring is being used.

Hilary begins to question her sanity and, after Roderick’s death, she seeks isolation from all those who have deceived her. She leaves Malvern and buries herself in a small village in Suffolk, where she attempts to restart her life, but finds that building a new life is rather harder than she thought.