Excerpt from The Photographer's Wife by Suzanne Joinson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'How is Eleanora?' William Harrington said finally, it was obviously a tremendous effort.

'She's well,' Prue said, deciding to say no more and to remain mysterious to punish the man. Then, mischievous, without looking at him, she said, 'You know, of course, she is married to the great photographer, Khaled Rasul?'

The man coughed, nodded, said nothing more. Prue watched him stare at the bare rocky landscape that quickly changed into grey stone houses on either side of the road. He was very pinched and thin-looking and he kept cupping one of his ears with a hand. Did it feel significant, his arrival here? Most people – she had discovered – gave it great symbolism, arriving in Jerusalem. They had planned it and read and dreamed and thought about it for such a long time before coming and they all seemed to have such hopes about the famous city and when they got here it was never quite what they were looking for. Maybe, for him, just as it had been for her, it was like any journey: exhausting, tedious, difficult.

' Why did you let that canary go?' she said. He sniffed, looking displeased at the question, and then sighed. 'I bought it for Eleanora in the market in Cairo, but then it suddenly seemed not quite the thing.'

They sat for the rest of the journey in silence. Prue pulled from her knapsack the piece of paper that Ihsan had given to her. It contained a list of character shapes and their meanings which she was in the process of memorising under the cover of Arabic lessons. She held the paper in such a way that the men couldn't see it.

Finally the motor car splattered to a stop. Prue folded up her paper. There was the sign saying Messrs COX & KINGS Shipping and Travel Agents nestled in front of the Hotel Fast and standing under its awning was her father, wearing, as he always did, a white suit and a fez, flapping a fly swat around his face. Next to him was Frau Baum.

' That,' Prue said to William Harrington, hoping to shock, 'is my father's German lover.'

'Oh,' he said, eyes widening. She then twisted her neck to look further along Jaffa Road and saw Eleanora coming along the street. The low winter-afternoon sun shone into her coat so that the tips of the fur looked like fire.

'There,' Prue said. ' Eleanora.'

'Hotel Fast,' the driver said at the same time and William Harrington let Prue get out first. She waved at her father and his lover and at Eleanora heading towards them as they waited to welcome the new arrival, but Prue did not stop. She swooped past and although her father called something out to her, she did not catch it, and she carried on regardless. When she looked back at them from inside the hotel, they had forgotten about her already.

Excerpted from The Photographer's Wife by Suzanne Joinson. Copyright © 2016 by Suzanne Joinson. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.