Publishing year: 2016
The prologue of the book shows us a woman who has just given birth, but we learn that she is going to give away her baby.
She is young and has no husband, and her mother tells her that her father has disowned her and should find her own way in life.
We never learn the name of this woman, and I wonder if Ellie, the main character, is the same person. Ellie owns a tea room and lives in a small Kent village with her husband, William, who is a history professor. One night when she is returning on her bike from her tea room after finishing baking her cakes, she has to jump and squeeze into the ditch as a speeding car almost runs her over. She hears a crash and sees the car has crashed. She runs to help, and to her horror she recognizes the car as her own and the man inside as her husband. Ellie tries to rescue him, but it is too late. William dies.
What haunts Ellie is that William was supposed to be at home that night, and she doesn’t know what he was doing speeding and drunk. William didn’t really drink, and he was the kind of person who acted sensible in all matters. So his behaviour that night was not like himself at all. Everybody in the village comes to comfort her, and one in particular, David Mallory, the owner of the strawberry fields, arrives after everybody has left, and at some point he hugs her, and she feels strangely close to him. David is married to Henrietta and they have two grown-up children. Shortly afterwards, Ellie learns that the migraines Henrietta often complains of are a symptom of cancer, and a few weeks later she dies.
After William’s death, Ellie tries to make sense of the night he died. William was the one who dealt with their finances, so when she checks their bank balance, she realises that the balance is much lower than it should be, and when she calls the bank, she is told that William withdraw £5,000 in cash. Ellie tries to find out what William spent that money on, but she can’t find any purchases, and she looks into his computer and mobile phone, but there is nothing. Then she looks through his drawers, and in one of them she finds a bag with feminine garments, which don’t belong to her, so she reaches the conclusion that William was having an affair. This puzzles Ellie; she admits that their marriage was not a passionate one, but she never thought William would cheat on her. She wonders who the woman was or why the bag with her clothes were in her cottage. As she knows she won’t know the answers, she lets it go, but the thought is always at the back of her mind.
Then David calls on her and asks her if she could go with him and his granddaughter to the circus as he doesn’t want to go alone. Ellie accepts and they are having a good time, but something happens when they are seeing the number of the lions. The tamer is attacked by one of the lions, and then a man from the staff appears and manages to reduce the lion and save the tamer. Everybody in the audience is quite shocked, and Pippa, David’s granddaughter, keeps asking about the lion and the tamer, and David tries to reassure her. Back in the car on the way home David tells Ellie that he wants to see her again, take her to dinner as he thinks she is very beautiful, and although Ellie feels shy and unsure, she agrees.
The man who Ellie saw in the circus appears again when she is outside her cottage and checking on her animals. She notices a rucksack on the foot of a tree and realises that there is a stranger on her property. This man appears, telling her that he thought that the place was deserted and he just wanted to spend the night there. Ellie recognises him, and he tells her that the number of the lions has been cancelled so he has lost his job in the circus, so he is trying to find something else. Ellie suggests he could try to find some farming work on the Mallory farm, and despite her misgivings, he allows her to spend the night on her property. I wonder who this man is and what role he will play in the novel.
The book fluctuates between present and past. There are chapters that take place in 1991 when Ellie, back then called Eleanor, is seventeen and studying. She intends to be a doctor when she goes to university. In this chapter her parents ask her to make a brief appearance at the party they are throwing for some friends. One of these friends is Les Ashton, who is their GP, and Eleanor thinks that he was her inspiration to want to become a doctor because of the way he treated her when she fell from her bicycle and hurt her leg when she was younger. After reading this chapter, I think that the woman in the prologue is really Ellie. I have the hunch that maybe Ellie was seduced by Les Ashton and got pregnant, which resulting in her father disowning her and her having to forfeit her dream to become a doctor. Her child was adopted, and in one of the chapters, Kate, who works in the tea room with her, tells her that David’s son and daughter are adopted, and I wonder if one of these children are Ellie’s.
Very interesting start!!! The Stranger, which is the title, surely refers to this man that Ellie finds on her property, so I imagine that he will have a important part in the novel. I just can’t wait to find out more.
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