Excerpt from Universality by Natasha Brown, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In fact, Spencer knows virtually nothing about the man he blames for his ruin. Spencer invited Jake to the farm as "a favor to Lenny," a woman he'd met in his building. "Her friend needed a place to quarantine for a few days," he says simply. Spencer doesn't know much about Lenny, either. She was one of the few who remained in their Kensington apartment block during the lockdown, a time when most residents retreated to secondary homes. Does he know her surname? "No." Age? "Um, mature." Her flat number? "I couldn't say for certain." What did he actually know about this woman when he decided to hand her the keys to his farm? "Well ..." He hesitates. "I knew her pretty well, in a sense ..."

Reluctantly, Spencer will admit to his philandering. He is separated from his wife, Claire, who remains in the family home raising their three-year-old daughter, Rosie, alone. "Not exactly alone," he's keen to point out. "They have the nanny four days a week. And it's not like Claire has a job." Claire and Spencer split in 2019 over his tryst with a colleague fifteen years his junior.

"Typical. He would say that." Claire opens the large front door to her Cobham home one-handed when I stop by days later. A shyly curious toddler clings to her left arm. We sit down at the kitchen table with a pot of filter coffee between us. Little Rosie lies on the soft-play mat in the corner kitted out in stripy leggings, a builder's hard hat, and a glittery tutu, mumbling as she forces plastic trucks to collide. "I'm a designer," Claire says. Since Rosie's birth in 2018, Claire has taken on part-time freelance work for a handful of clients. Before that, she worked at a boutique branding agency, after studying art history at Oxford, where she met Spencer. The pair married soon after graduation, spending a few years in London before moving to this exclusive village, favored by footballers and financiers, and starting a family.

Claire is sanguine about their separation. "People change, don't they?" Their house in Cobham never really felt like Spencer's home. "He stayed in the city mostly. His hours were so long it made sense." In recent years, Spencer had begun spending weekends at his Kensington pied-à-terre, too. "I'm not stupid," Claire says of the affairs. "I know what goes on." Still, it wasn't until Claire discovered the extent of Spencer's involvement with a younger colleague that she decided to officially call it quits. "There's a line," she says. Spencer had crossed it.

In 2015, Spencer's father died after a prolonged illness. "That was the beginning of his farm obsession," according to Claire. Every weekend, Spencer would attend auctions or travel to remote towns to view land plots and properties. A late effort, perhaps triggered by grief, to emulate his father—a "man's man" who built a successful construction company from the ground up. "His dad never quite understood him," Claire says. "But Rich idolized the guy." Eventually, Spencer bought Alderton, an old hill-top farm in Queensbury, a quiet West Yorkshire village. Claire didn't think much of the property. "It was a complete wreck. A rubbish heap on a big hill in an awful little town. No one with any sense would touch it."

Excerpted from Universality by Natasha Brown. Copyright © 2025 by Natasha Brown. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.