What The Apples Knew

Helen Carrick has spent most of her life being sensible.

Nearly sixty, widowed after thirty years of marriage, she has a respectable job, a tidy house and a quiet garden. She has also spent years convincing herself that wanting very little is the same thing as being content.

Then, one Saturday afternoon, a bag of Bramley apples spills across the pavement, and a stranger stops to help her collect them.

Daniel is different from any man Helen has known. Patient, perceptive and unexpectedly frank, he sees something in her that she has spent a lifetime hiding, even from herself. What begins with a chance encounter develops slowly into a relationship that challenges everything Helen believes about age, desire and the life she thought was already behind her.

As Daniel gently encourages her to discover what she wants rather than what she thinks she ought to want, Helen begins to change. She finds courage, discovers an unexpected talent for painting, and learns that sensuality and intimacy do not belong exclusively to the young.

And when the past finally gives way to the future, an old paint box, a painted record sleeve, a conservatory filled with light, and a small Bramley tree become reminders of how unexpectedly a life can begin again.

What the Apples Knew is a warm, sensual story about second chances, awakening desire and discovering that it is never too late to find out who you really are.