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Haunted by his loss, and honouring a pledge never to leave Sam, he takes a job tending the cemetery where Sam lies buried. It is then he discovers he can see and talk to Sam’s ghost and, just like the good old days, the brothers play baseball together every evening without fail for 13 years. Then Charlie meets Tess, a stunning young yachtswoman, visiting her father’s grave, and in one deliciously seductive evening, falls in love with her.

When Tess goes missing at sea, Charlie has to choose between keeping his appointment with Sam, or breaking free to search for Tess and the chance of a future he longs to have with her.

The book urges the reader to really live life to the full, dive for dreams and allow for the possibility of miracles. You have to suspend disbelief for this novel, but if you do you will love it.

Ben was recently interviewed about what he believes life tells us about love, this is what he said: ‘My parents were childhood sweethearts and continued to smooch on street corners, mortifying for my sister and me as teenagers. My mother says love is seeking to understand the other person in the way you understand yourself. She is an avid volunteer for museums and charities and we talk at least once a day. She is my secret weapon because she is a gifted editor.’

‘My father, a lawyer, was wise, a gentle man and a gentleman. He was the encyclopaedia dad; there was nothing about which he didn’t know the facts and figures. He was the force driving us towards the world of ideas. He was shy and reserved while my mother is more outgoing.

I worshipped my sister Elizabeth, four years my senior, and sat on the outskirts of her teenage parties. I felt safe with her. She looked out for me. Elizabeth is now a specialist in international affairs and a mother of two but still introduces me as her baby brother.’

‘Eleven years ago my father died at 64 of a brain haemorrhage. We sat by his bedside for six days while he lay in a coma. Since then I have grappled with my grief. It is not a straight line of getting better but a broken one, when you suddenly feel that void again. We had a full and open relationship, so there is no unfinished business, but I have been robbed of a friend and a compass. Some days I’m very aware of how my life has been diminished by his absence but I have been blessed in other ways. My wife has helped me to appreciate and recognise the present and the future in a way I felt cut off from after my father’s death. I am a sceptical journalist and I don’t know if there is a place where spirits lurk, but it gives me solace to think the world works in this way.

It is not an original idea that love is a transforming and liberating force, but Karen opened up my senses. She is smart, funny, strong-willed, and it is heartbreaking that she never knew my father as they were both private in a way that would have connected them to each other. I was smitten when I saw her at a party because everything about her sparkled. I finagled a date but I was suffering from flu, which I didn’t mention, so she must have thought I was very sweaty and nervous. It was soon after my father’s death and I was not capable of sustaining a relationship. A decade later a friend set us up on a blind date. When I found out it was her, I emailed her that I had recovered from the flu. She was just as sparkly. We were both interested in the world but could be silly together. It is an accumulation of small moments that leads to that overwhelming sensation when you know you are in love. It is not a lightening bolt but something softer.

I appealed to the management of the Empire State Building to let me propose in a little room at the top which is closed to the public, and I went down on bended knee. We married a year ago, gathered around the sycamore tree in the yard of my childhood home.

I’ve had my share of hits and misses. It’s taken me a long time to find my way, a combination of finding my partner and finding myself. They say that the first year in a marriage is the hardest but I hope they’re all like this. I know from the grief over my father that the greatest gamble is that if you feel love, you can lose it. This is what keeps people up at night, staring across as their partner sleeps, wondering: ‘What if I lose this?’

Find out more about the books published by Picador (Pan MacMillan) from their website >>here
 

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