Afterwards by Charlotte Leonard

A 2023 Tea Leaves and Reads Book Club title – back in stock after popular demand! You can read our five star review here.

This is the story of loss – and what happens afterwards…

When Emma gets home after work one evening, she calls hello to her husband Jay, as she always does. Stepping into the kitchen, she sees he has done the shopping, as she had reminded him to; remembered to buy peppercorns; has bought her flowers. Everything is neatly put away. But Jay is not there.

A photographer, all Jay has left behind is his camera containing five photographs, which are unlike his other work. Emma follows the images to Cornwall, beginning a journey in which old relationships are re-written and new ones are formed. As the visual mystery of each photograph unfolds, Emma finds herself unravelling and perilously close to breaking point. But could her unlikely salvation lie in the sea, a small community of swimmers and the promise of something Emma thought she didn’t want?