First loves are rarely, if ever, our only loves. But whether romantic, platonic or something indefinable between and beyond, they are the root from which our futures fruit: a fixed part of everything that comes after. For Erica and Laure, the lovers at the heart of Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s latest novel, Almost Life, this bedrock is more than an echo, stronger than a distant memory, and far more profound than the simple holiday fling they wish it could be.

It’s a blistering summer day in 1978 when cynical Parisian graduate student Laure is approached by Erica, a naïve English tourist looking for purpose on the steps of Sacré-Cœur. In a moment of weakness, Laure takes Erica under her wing and introduces her to the Paris she knows: fringe, queer, and real. Undeterred by Paris and Laure’s equally sharp edges, Erica falls in love – but not enough to stay. Over the next four decades this decision ricochets through both their lives, shaping not just themselves but the loves that follow as they grapple with the impossibility of holding onto something precious without leaving marks.

With the measured hand she applies to the breadth of Laure and Erica’s story, it’s clear to see why Millwood Hargrave is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Almost Life is an exercise in patience; while our lovers fall quickly, this is a novel that keeps us tethered to their journeys long after the initial euphoria has burned out. With this, time becomes as much of a character as Erica and Laure, bending and warping around them until, like spun sugar finally setting, it snaps into devastating focus. Across years, cities, spouses, jobs, births and deaths, Almost Life is unflinching as it traces the lives that must be lived – as well as those unlived, faint as a carbon-paper copy lying underneath.