Last Summer in Arcadia (2003)

Deirdre Purcell's 2003 novel follows three Dublin couples and their friendships through the year after a shared holiday in Collioure in the south of France: Tess and Jerry Brennan, Rita and Ricky, and Maddy, married to a television soap star. It opens with Tess and Jerry waiting for the police to arrive, and each of the women takes a turn at telling the story. (Open Library)

Watches

Raymond Weil watch: On the night she learns that Jerry has been carrying on with Susan Vitelli Moore, the young woman from his office who photographed her own breasts and sent them to him, Tess drinks gin at Maddy's house and finds herself staring at her watch, a Raymond Weil in white gold with a discreet diamond on its bezel, last year's birthday present from her husband. Tired and drunk, she has to resist taking it off and grinding it underfoot, because he probably sent Susan to buy it. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: I continued to stare at the watch, Raymond Weil, last year's birthday present from my husband. A beautiful watch, delicately crafted in white gold with a discreet diamond on its bezel. (Deirdre Purcell, Last Summer in Arcadia, scan cataloged as Headline, 2012, p. 255, OCR line-break hyphen closed up; the narrator is named as Tess Butler Brennan on p. 244 and the affair is set out on pp. 245 to 259; Headline published the first edition in 2003; Internet Archive scan OCR)