Jennifer Barraclough

Charlotte has always done what Henry wants. She cooks his meals, follows his routines, and quietly suffocates in the comfortable Middle England life they share. Now retired, Henry has taken over the household, the dishwasher loading, the weekly menus, the rota of domestic tasks. Charlotte, meanwhile, attends life coaching sessions and wonders what she actually wants. Then an invitation arrives for Henry's medical school reunion, and everything changes.
Because Rupert will be there. The brilliant, charming cardiologist who derailed Charlotte's entire future decades ago, and whose name she has never once spoken to her husband. Charlotte has carried that secret for forty years. Now her life coach is urging her to speak her truth, own her power, and confront the past. But confronting the past, with a glass of wine and a lifetime of suppressed feelings, rarely goes to plan.
Sharp, wry, and deeply unsettling, No Good Deed is a tragicomic novella about a woman who tries very hard to do the right thing, and keeps getting it spectacularly wrong. It builds through a marriage full of quiet tension, a reunion full of old wounds, a heart surgery that changes everything, and ends with a twist that will haunt you long after the final page. For fans of wry British psychological fiction with complex, quietly devastating female protagonists and endings that stop your heart.