RATING: VERY GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
I really loved the end, and there were parts I didn’t expect at all.
After Elliot publishes the story without telling Abby, she is upset, and even though they talk on the phone and he explains that his edition pushed him to write the article, Abby has mixed feelings. In the meantime, Ros wants to talk to her. After the article, Dominic’s name and reputation are soiled, so since Ros doesn’t believe for one moment that Dom was a Russian spy, she asks Abby to help her find the truth, and Abby accepts.
Abby has dinner with Elliot, and after her conversation with Nick, she feels guilty for wanting to look sexy for Elliot and like his flirty ways. Yet, her intention that night is to get his help to unearth the truth about Dominic Blake. However, Elliot refuses to move a finger to help because for him Dominic Blake is just a source for an article, and he doesn’t care what happens afterwards, and he also tells her that he has a reputation to protect. So after saying Blake was a Russian spy, he can’t say the opposite in another article. Abby is disappointed as she thought that Elliot cared for the human side of his articles, but in reality, the people in his articles are nothing but tools for him. So it is then that she realizes that what happened in St Petersburg will stay there, and this is the last time she will see him. I have to say that I felt so happy when Abby walked out. From the first I didn’t like Elliot at all. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like him.
Then Ros and Abby try to find out the truth with their own means. Ros thinks that someone knows something as shortly after the article was published, she got a postcard, urging her to trust Dominic. Abby talks to Lord Jonathon Soames, and then she goes to talk to Lady Victoria. The woman tells her more about Dominic Blake. He wasn’t a Russian spy, but a double agent, and she knew that since she was her handler. Ros discovers from the handwriting in a birthday card she finds in Victoria’s living room that she is the one who sent the card, so that is why she finally opens up and tells them what she knows. There were rumours that he might have been killed after someone betrayed him. Victoria thinks there was a mole. They also tell them that a naval attaché, Eugene, gave Dominic information that put him at risk. The information was that the Russians had less atomic armament that America thought. Shortly after this revelation, Eugene died in strange circumstances, and Dominic knew that his life was in danger. What happened in reality, Victoria doesn’t know.
After all these investigations, Abby decides to cave in and visit the therapist with Nick. In this session, they finally talk. Abby discovers some things she doesn’t like. Nick admits that the client he had the one-night stand with was someone he knew and he wasn’t so drunk. He also reveals that he felt lost and afraid. Having a child was something that he wasn’t ready yet, but he agreed to go through all the treatments because that was what Abby wanted, and he loved her so much. Then he admits that one of the things that made her freak out was when Ginny, his sister, had told him that Abby wasn’t ready to stay in a marriage that preventing her from becoming a mother. Abby swears she never said anything like that to Ginny, or maybe she explained herself wrong.
This is the turning point after weeks of separation, and I think Abby feels slightly hopeful, but she still doesn’t know if she can get back with a man she doesn’t trust. Yet, after the session with the therapist, Abby and Nick have lunch together and they talk. Abby tells him about how she is helping Ros, and then Nick surprises Abby as he reveals something else she didn’t know about her husband. All she knew was that he was in IT, but what Nick tells him that he works in software security, and he is paid to hack into computers to check how safe the systems of his clients are. Abby is shocked, realising how much or in this case, how little she knows the man is still her husband. Nick offers to help her with the investigation.
Then Anna, one of her friends, has her hen night as she is to be married soon. In that celebration Abby comes face to face with Ginny, Nick’s sister. Ginny is not happy when Suze, another of their friends, is not very discreet to announce that Abby and Elliot had a thing in St Petersburg. Yet, when Ginny brings up the matter, Abby has something else to say. She wants to know how Nick was under the impression that she was ready to leave him if she never got to become pregnant. Ginny admits that she tried to sabotage their marriage. She knows how good a father Nick could be, and she knew that with Abby there was no way they could become parents as they have proved to be incompatible together. Now she feels guilty and blames herself for pushing her brother into another woman’s arms, and that was she pushed them to see the therapist. At least, she owns up to it, but I don’t think that makes Abby feel better, but in a way she can understand where Nick stood when he betrayed her like that.
It was when seeing a photograph of the two of them a few days after the deed when she realizes something. Anna insists that what she can see in Nick’s eyes is love, but she sees pain and guilt. Then as she studies the image of her husband that day, she realizes that it reminds her of something. Nick’s gaze is like the one in the photograph of Dominic, and she understands that Dominic knew that he wouldn’t return from the jungle. With this sudden idea, she goes to see Nick and share her ideas. She thinks that Jonathon Soames is the mole that Victoria talked about, so she intends to talk to the man again, and Nick promises to hack into the man’s email account and phones.
Later that day Nick calls her, telling her that he is going to be arrested. Abby is horrified and calls her lawyer friends, and then she gets the visit of Jonathon Soames. Then the man tells him the whole truth. It is true that Dominic was a double agent, and after Eugene, the Russian attaché, died in strange circumstances, he knew that his life was in danger. Jonathon reveals something shocking. Dominic Blake is alive!!!! The expedition to the jungle in Peru was a ruse to fake his death/disappearance so that he could escape those after him.
We then learn that Dominic has lived in Ireland for forty years after spending the first years travelling in America. The original plan was for him to re-appear a few years later when the threat had gone, and he had decided to see Ros in a conference she was giving in Dublin. Even though Jonathon had told him that Ros had moved on and had a boyfriend, Dominic couldn’t let go. However, when he saw her from a discreet position, happy, enjoying the attentions of her boyfriend, he knew he had no right to complicate her life, which is what that would mean for her. So he buried himself in a little town in Ireland. Now Jonathon calls to tell him that Ros knows the truth, and they are coming to him in a few days.
The encounter between Ros and Dominic is the most romantic part in the book. I love the conversation as Dominic explains his reasons for his decisions, and Ros decides they have wasted too many years to be angry. It is a lovely scene, and Ros stay with him in Ireland to make up for the lost time.
Another lovely scene is when Abby finally decides that where she wants to be is with Nick, and they end up together as well. This part is not as romantic as Ross and Dominic’s part, but it was also lovely. In general the whole book was wonderful, and I loved every single page in it.
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