The Thursday Friend Catherine Cookson by Catherine Cookson 9781780360164, B004TO6DNQ instant download after payment.

Hannah and Humphrey Drayton were regarded by all who knew them as the perfect married couple. However, all was not as it appeared on the surface, and after years of tyranny and loneliness, Hannah could no longer bear this stuffy City broker. The only relief she had was from his absence on Thursday evenings, when he played bridge with a group of acquaintances, and at weekends, which he spent with an elderly couple who regarded him as the son they had never had.
Hannah, in despair and in the face of her husband’s ridicule, took refuge in her writing, and it was the completion of a book for children that took her to the office of a publisher, a visit that was to change her life. There she was to meet David Graventon, an assistant to the publisher, and a man she was soon to think of as her Thursday Friend.
Taking advantage of Humphrey’s absences, she and David would meet and talk, visit the theatre and the cinema – activities she had never enjoyed with her husband. He, of course, knew nothing of Hannah’s ‘other life’, being preoccupied with protecting what he imagined were his future interests. And even when he became aware that she was seeing someone his thoughts of revenge were hamstrung by a secret of his own.
Then an event occurred that was to destroy all his prospects, causing him to plan a bitter retaliation for what he regarded as his wife’s betrayal. As for Hannah, her Thursday Friend was to become the saviour of her very existence – but would he manage to resolve his own not inconsiderable personal difficulties and offer Hannah the happiness she craved? With its deceptively simple theme, The Thursday Friend is a remarkable novel that explores the complexities of human relationships.