Expiration Dates

Daphne Bell has lived for more than twenty years with a strange certainty that the universe is looking out for her. Whenever she meets a new man, a slip of paper turns up bearing his name and a number, the exact length of time the two of them will be together. Martin in Paris lasted three days. Noah in San Francisco lasted five weeks. Hugo, her ex-boyfriend who became her best friend, got three months.

All this time Daphne has wondered whether a slip would ever come without a number. Then, on a blind date at her favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, it finally does: the paper holds only a name, Jake.

As the relationship with Jake develops, Daphne starts to question what the paper has told her. She has to work out what it means to be committed and honest at once, because she knows things Jake does not, and learning them would break his heart.

This is a novel by Rebecca Serle, the author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer. It is a story about being single, about finding love, and about how each of us decides for ourselves what those things mean.