Jane Retzig

The Photograph Jane Retzig

Publisher Marketing: Everybody's worried about Becky. As part of the Marsten building dynasty, she's a well established member of the wealthy elite in Broadgate, the small North Yorkshire market town where her family have lived for generations. At twenty eight, with her own house and a successful business, everybody thinks that it's high time she was settling down. But she's too rich too young, and much too cute for her own good. And ever since the sudden death of her father she's been driving her friends and family to distraction, bunking off work, and playing fast and loose with the bored housewives she meets through 'Girl Power', the off-shoot of Marsten Builders she co-runs with her best friend Frankie. When she hears Niamh busking in the centre of Broadgate, Becky is stunned by the intensity of her attraction to the itinerant young musician. Apart from a brief attempt at a live-in relationship in her early twenties she has always been much too scared of commitment to want to really care for anyone. But Niamh instantly breaks through her defences and sends Becky freefalling into something that even the cynical young builder has to admit, feels shockingly like love. The feeling is mutual. For Niamh, estranged from her own family and drifting wherever work or impulse take her, Becky has a familiar feel that reminds her of the home she has lost, and she quickly finds herself looking for ways to meet this intriguing young woman again. Both women are deeply wary of any kind of new relationship. Their early experiences have left them wounded and vulnerable. But for some reason they can't help but trust each other. Even as the star-crossed pair are taking their first shaky steps towards learning to love again, they begin to realise that their apparently chance meeting is already a part of a much bigger drama unfolding in their lives. The past is beginning to catch up with them. It will reopen old wounds, bring terrible secrets into the open and test each of them to their limit. And as events gain their own momentum Becky and Niamh are faced with challenges and decisions that threaten to have catastrophic consequences for themselves and for many of the people closest to them.