The Gap Year for Grown-Ups

Book excerpt: Have you ever wanted to take a holiday from your life? After twenty years of comfortable marriage, and with the kids finally off her hands, Sarah Lewis realises she has filled the washing machine once too often. Surely there must be more to life than this? What she wants is an adventure - a wild, unpredictable adventure - but her husband, good old reliable David, is very happy with the status quo. Besides, he's got his old car to tinker with, when he eventually gets round to it. What Sarah needs is a gap year for grown-ups - and she wants to do it alone. Confident the grass must be greener elsewhere, she heads for France, leaving behind a devastated and resentful David, faced with an empty house and a freezer full of meals for one. But is life really better on the other side of the fence? With a gorgeous French man demanding her company and a renewed joie de vivre, Sarah certainly seems to think so. But then a catastrophe threatens to derail much more than Sarah's little adventure. Pretty soon, she begins to wonder whether gap years are for grown-ups after all...