Excerpt from Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Eleanor saw me and waved hazily as though she was much further away than she was. She took Lily from Ben, crossed the road and came up to me.

'Here you go.' She plonked her in my arms, turning away.

'Hello precious,' I mouthed to the child, kissing the kink in her silky hair. Lily was her usual irreproachable self. She wasn't dressed up in the slightest, but you could tell she sensed it was a special day and she was wide awake and in adventurous mood, eyes smiling at me curiously. Maybe white terry towelling for a christening was chic? Seaside-ish. Freshly baked. A dressed-up baby, a formal tot bound in dusty lace like a child bride was an appalling idea, possibly. She was clean.

I couldn't look at Eleanor closely, not when we were celebrating. I sometimes thought what I minded most was that all the kindness had gone from her face. the way she had profaned her body.

My eyes safely hovering a few inches above her head, I congratulated her with the biggest smile I had on me. I hoped I wouldn't offend her with approximated cheer. I squinted at Ben chatting to the men with the beer bottles. He carried it well, his brand of cavern-faced mania, in part because he was tall and serious and he already had the atmosphere of distractedness clever people often have. Either that or his warm-hearted confusion was oddly endearing. He brought more of himself to this life, I felt, than she did. I didn't expect very much from him, perhaps that was all it was. And of course it wasn't nothing that they were all more or less on time and Lily looked all right and he'd put on a white shirt with a collar and Eleanor's smile had a certain high wattage, although she looked half crazed, scratching at her neck repeatedly, hollow-cheeked, hard red-rimmed eyes. they were doing their best.

Jean Reynolds from school had offered to be my date. We'd been working side by side for almost two decades and were quite friendly these days, after several years of polite fascination. On both sides, I liked to think.

'I'd do you proud,' she said. 'I have hats, I have brooches.'

I laughed. 'I'm sure you do, but... '

'You'd rather keep things simple?'

'If you don't mind.'

I made myself give Eleanor a hug, feeding my free arm round her, imprecisely. 'Congratulations. You're a genius!' I nodded towards the babe, which was a masterpiece. Lily launched herself into the cuddle like the filling in a sandwich.

the priest appeared, calling out bright hullo hullos. He wore his good looks with a certain luxurious amusement. He was tall, strong-set, dark-eyed, effusive. Perhaps he had been told to make a fuss of me. He said it was a pleasure to meet me and that Ben and Eleanor had told him what a wonderful support I was and how they couldn't have done it without me.

'It's my absolute pleasure.' I was drunk on him suddenly. Usually I could only endure sympathy that was lightly done– it was such a hard thing to convey– but his tone was just right. His church was an inclusive church and that didn't just mean welcoming allcomers, he said, because that was, that was a given, but providing support in the community and hot dinners and baby clothes and a soup-and-sonatas drop-in for the elderly parishioners on Mondays. He wanted to get a community fridge project off the ground– they were everywhere in New Zealand– that was his next initiative.

That sounds really interesting,' I heard myself say. His dark curly hair sprang forward suddenly, releasing itself over his ears and forehead, and sheepishly he batted it away. He was so animated. I appreciated the fact that there was nothing gaunt about him. He made me think of Oscar Wilde.

'Music and movement for the under fives on Tuesday afternoons,' he continued with a flourish. 'Single-dad thursdays.' He laughed and coloured slightly. For half a second I thought he was going to confide something lavish to me–'You know I've one or two myself, off the record'– but no such luck.

Excerpted from Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt. Copyright © 2023 by Susie Boyt. Excerpted by permission of New York Review Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.