IN ONE DAY, Ardashir Vakil shows that twenty-four hours is all we need to learn the whole story of a troubled marriage. The novel opens shortly after midnight on 15 March 1999 in Ben Tennyson and Priya Pamaik's North London flat. It is their son Whacka's third birthday. Ben is thirty-one, an English teacher in a comprehensive school, a tennis player, and a thwarted food columnist, stalled on his second cookery book. Priya, also thirty something, a former left-wing activist and a champion of free speech (provided she agrees with the sentiments expressed), is a broadcaster at the BBC. Both are in therapy.

The relationship has had its rocky moments but for the first two years of Whacka's life, Ben, at least, had been happy. Priya, by contrast, had been guarding a guilty secret. Then, Ben's devastating discovery of a letter from Leo. a close mutual friend. from which he learned of her