Book description
In the summer of 1992, Jeremy Howe and his wife, Lizzie, were tending
to last-minute holiday preparations. Lizzie was leaving to teach at a
summer school before she could join Jeremy and their two daughters,
Jessica, six and Lucy, four, at the seaside. That night, arriving at his
mother’s in Suffolk, Jeremy managed to get the excited girls to go to
sleep, irritated that their mother hadn't called to say goodnight as she
had promised. Just after midnight the household was woken by a policeman
who had come to tell them that Lizzie was dead. She had been murdered.
Twenty years after that terrible night, Jeremy and his girls are not
the people they might have been had Lizzie not died. They’re certainly
different, but not damaged. This is the candid, heartrending story of
how they got there, of how, faced with the worst thing that could
possibly happen, they put their lives back together, bit by bit and
piece by piece. It's a story of how Daddy became Mummydaddy and of the
pitfalls along the way, from how on earth you decide what to tell your
children about their mother's violent death to the practicalities of
knowing what they like in their packed lunch; from helping your children
to grieve when your own grief is so sharp it threatens to overwhelm you
to making sure that they brush their teeth and comb their hair. It's a
story full of tears, but also of love and family and redemption.
Jeremy Howe is a senior executive at the BBC. He lives in London with
his wife, Jennie. His two daughters are now grown-up.
