Jilla

Twenty years ago, they were the best of friends. When Connie invites her university gang on the holiday of a lifetime, a safari in the Kalahari, they have little in common anymore. Is getting them back together a terrible mistake?

Connie is lonely. With her children at secondary school and an ambitious MP husband, who is regularly adulterous, she is searching for her own purpose in life. She feels insecure next to Sara, a driven, defiantly single barrister, and has conflicted feelings towards her old flame, the newly-divorced Luke, whose own secrets threaten to overwhelm him. Conservative lawyer Matt doubtfully confides he is having a surrogate baby; Sara questions her own professionalism as her latest murder trial comes under scrutiny; Daniel discovers his yearning to buy land and put down roots, which his partner Alan does not share, and Lizzie struggles with feelings of jealousy that are closer to home than is comfortable for anyone.

Despite the undercurrent of tension, they are drawn into the adventure and begin to enjoy each other once more, a million miles away from their daily concerns. They finally have space to explore what really matters to them. But a series of events and revelations bring new challenges to the group. As their lives start to unravel, they see how they are all linked together. New relationships are formed, old ones run their course, and more news from home brings further tragedy. Can the stark beauty and calm of the Kalahari help them rediscover the friendship that binds them together? Will they all make it back to London in one piece?

Shireen Jilla was a journalist before she turned her hand to fiction. Exiled, a dark psychodrama set in New York, was published in 2011. The Art of Unpacking Your Life is her second novel. She lives with her husband and three children beside the river in west London.