The End of the Affair recap

In postwar London, novelist Maurice Bendrix remains consumed by Sarah Miles, the married woman who abruptly ended their wartime affair. When Sarah's husband Henry voices suspicions, Bendrix hires a detective and obtains Sarah's diary. It reveals that after a bombing appeared to kill Bendrix, Sarah promised God she would leave him if his life were restored; seeing him alive, she kept the vow despite continuing to love him. Bendrix confronts her, but illness and her religious struggle prevent their reunion. Sarah dies, and incidents interpreted as miracles follow, while Bendrix learns she was secretly baptized Catholic as a child. His investigation therefore destroys his confident unbelief without curing his jealousy: he comes to believe in the God he resents for claiming Sarah, and ends pleading for release from further demands of love.

In 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix encounters civil servant Henry Miles on a wet London common. Bendrix once conducted an affair with Henry's wife Sarah during the Blitz, but Sarah ended it without explanation, leaving him bitter. Henry admits that Sarah's absences have made him consider hiring a detective, although he cannot bring himself to do it. Bendrix, driven by jealousy and a desire to prove that Sarah has replaced him, decides to pursue the inquiry himself. A visit to the Miles household confirms that his feelings remain active and that Sarah is still capable of unsettling him.

Bendrix employs Mr Savage's agency, and the detective Parkis begins following Sarah. Parkis reports her movements and identifies visits that appear secretive, while his awkward methods and occasional use of his young son make the surveillance both intimate and intrusive. Bendrix revisits the wartime affair in memory: he and Sarah had grown close while he researched Henry's professional world for a novel, and their happiness was shadowed by his possessiveness. The investigation produces evidence of concealment but does not yet tell Bendrix whom Sarah is seeing or why she left him.

Parkis obtains Sarah's diary, which Bendrix reads. Its account changes the meaning of the affair's ending. During an air raid, an explosion knocked Bendrix unconscious and Sarah believed him dead. In terror she prayed and promised God that she would give Bendrix up forever if he were restored to life. When he appeared alive, she treated the promise as binding. Her withdrawal was therefore not evidence that she had stopped loving him. The diary also records her efforts to escape or understand the vow, including visits to the rationalist Richard Smythe and to a Catholic priest. Bendrix learns that he has been competing not with another human lover but with Sarah's emerging belief.

Knowing the truth, Bendrix wants Sarah to abandon her promise and return to him. Sarah remains divided: she still loves Bendrix and longs for ordinary happiness, yet the bargain made beside his apparently lifeless body has become inseparable from her sense that God exists. Henry, Sarah, and Bendrix are caught in a triangle shaped as much by pity and loyalty as by desire. Sarah's health worsens after she walks in harsh weather. Before Bendrix can secure the reunion he imagines, she becomes seriously ill.

Sarah dies, leaving Henry and Bendrix joined by grief rather than rivalry. Her mother reveals that Sarah was secretly baptized Catholic in childhood. After the funeral, several events are attributed to Sarah's intercession: Parkis connects his son's unexpected recovery with contact involving Sarah, and Richard Smythe's facial mark disappears after Bendrix appeals to her. Bendrix cannot dismiss these events as readily as he once would have. He now believes that the God Sarah addressed may be real, but experiences belief as another form of loss and jealousy. The book closes with his hatred giving way to weariness as he asks God to stop pursuing him and to leave him alone.

Sarah dies after becoming ill, before she and Bendrix can resume the life he wants with her. Afterward Bendrix learns that her mother secretly had her baptized as a child. Other people report events they regard as answers to prayers or miracles associated with Sarah: Parkis believes contact with one of her books helps his gravely ill son, and Smythe's facial mark disappears after Bendrix invokes Sarah. Henry and Bendrix remain together in grief, while Bendrix moves from denying God to believing in a God he hates for taking Sarah and demanding her promise. He ends not with restored unbelief but with exhausted resistance, asking to be left alone rather than drawn any further toward love or faith.