How I fell for the man next door ... 3 DAYS after my husband left

Best-selling novelist Jane Green reveals the real-life

The day my husband threw some clothes into a suitcase and walked out, I was left frozen, standing in our bedroom, listening to the sound of his car pull out of the gravel driveway and up the road until I couldn’t hear it any more.

I tiptoed downstairs, shaky and shocked. had that really just happened? had he actually left and, if he had, did it mean my marriage was over?

Our children were young — aged six, four and two-year-old twins — and I hadn’t been happy for a long time, but I never imagined my seven-year marriage would be over in what felt like a matter of minutes.

As I walked back upstairs, I realised the dark cloud that had been sitting on my shoulders for months had lifted.

I phoned a friend. ‘I think maybe we have just separated,’ I said with a shaky voice, gazing out of the window at the trees.

The shock took a while to subside. During the week, life felt much like normal. I kept myself busy writing and ferrying the children to school and back.

In the evenings I drank big glasses of wine and went to bed early, wondering if life would ever feel normal again.

When the children left to stay with their father, I drifted in an empty, quiet house, unmoored.

For seven years I had been someone’s wife, someone’s mother. I had no idea who I was supposed to be, rattling around in that old farmhouse all by myself.

I’d grown up in London, where I had met my American husband. After a year of dating, a year of married life and one child, we moved to the U.S., settling in Westport, Connecticut. But a year later, we left for the countryside, thinking we wanted a fresh start in a sleepy town.

I had loved it, but now that single motherhood stretched ahead of me, I quickly recognised that I had little support there. So, three days after my husband moved out, I decided to return to my old town, the one where my friends were; the life I had built five years ago.

I found an advertisement online for a tiny beach cottage that was small and beautiful, filled with sunlight and possibilities. I dialled the number and was relieved when the landlord had a voice that was upbeat and warm.

When I introduced myself, he paused. ‘Jane? We know each other!’ It was a man named Ian, whom I’d met a few times over the years.

Several days later I went to see the house. It was tiny, far too small, but a voice in my head kept whispering that we were supposed to be there. I walked to the beach