Simon MacDonald

And that certainly seemed to be the message he was giving her.

and then one day she comes across him and he's kissing her boss's daughter, and then it turns out that he has slept with her as well.

So that causes her enormous distress.

She doesn't break it off with him then.

She stays with him, but then other things happen that persuade her that he is, well, I think he almost says to her that he's a sex addict.

She has to make a decision as to whether she can live with him as he is.

She realises she can't change him, so she has to make a decision as to whether she could live

with that, with his knowing that he adored and loved her, but that he had these, so he says, uncontrollable sexual urges and she decides that she can't and she leaves him.

It did make me really wonder about the chronology as to whether she did know before she married him, whether he demonstrated that he was unfaithful and whether she knew that he was going to be a womaniser.

I really wondered if she went into it knowing that or if that was something that she didn't discover until later.

And I felt quite distressed when she ended up deciding that she couldn't marry him because they just seemed so compatible and it seemed that she had found a man that really understood her and loved her for what she was.

And it made me think what a difficult dilemma that must have been, knowing all of that herself, to then make the decision that she couldn't live with a man who was a womaniser despite that.

the wonderful aspects of the relationship and that she was going to break it off.

I was quite distraught at that point, I have to confess.

You're right, of course, Kate.

The feminist trumps the romantic idealist in me.

You're absolutely right.

And it is wonderful to see in this book how she develops the alternative life that Hillary could have led.

And I agree, as the book moves on, we see more and more bad behaviour from Bill.

And yes, it's certainly a very, very unfavourable portrayal of him