Sealed letter. Emma Donoghue. 2012.

After a separation of many years, Emily ‘Fido’ Faithfull bumps into her old friend Helen Codrington on the streets of Victorian London. Much has changed. Helen is more and more unhappy in her marriage  to the older Vice-Admiral Codrington, while Fido has become a successful woman of business and a pioneer in the British Women’s Movement. But, for all her independence of mind, Fido is too trusting of her once-dear companion and finds herself drawn into aiding Helen’s obsessive affair with a young army officer.

When the Vice-Admiral seizes the children and sues for divorce, the women’s friendship unravels amid accusations of adultery and counter-attractions of cruelty and attempted rape, as well as a mysterious sealed letter that could destroy more than one life…….