Excerpt from The Lost Ticket by Freya Sampson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What?"

Libby closed her eyes and she was back there, watching Simon across the candlelit table, the way he was chewing his thumbnail as he did when he was nervous. The bubble of excitement that had risen in her throat as it occurred to her what this meant.

"Lib?"

"I thought he was about to propose," she said in a quiet voice.

"Oh my god!"

"I know." Libby felt the emotion coming up again, and she took a breath to push it back down. "But it turns out he wasn't working out how to propose to me. He was working out how to break up with me."

"The total bastard," Rebecca said, with a little too much relish. "What did he say?"

"He said that he still loved me but he's been unhappy for a while. That things have got stale and he's been questioning whether he wants to be in a relationship anymore. He said he thought it was best to be honest and tell me how he felt, rather than-what did he say?-'suffer in silence any longer.'"

"And why did he take you to a romantic restaurant to tell you all of this?"

"He said he thought it was easier. That at home I'd have got upset, but he knew I'd never make a scene in front of other diners."

"I have to give it to him-that's some Machiavellian-level planning," Rebecca said, shaking her head in admiration. "And you really thought he was going to propose?"

"We'd always said we'd get engaged when we turned thirty, and my birthday's soon, so ..."

"You know what this is, don't you?" Rebecca said. "This is a classic midlife crisis"

Excerpted from The Lost Ticket by Freya Sampson. Copyright © 2022 by Freya Sampson. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.