THE wedding is a small affair. Issac had wanted something bigger, but Clara still felt a fraud, despite her brother Joseph’s assurances that Issac really loved her. She regularly pinches herself to se

I WOKE up after a vivid dream of Eleanor. I’d had quite a few recently. Eleanor was my half-sister. She was older than me – the daughter of Dad’s first wife, Dorrie. My mum only found out he had a fir

WOULD you look at the man!” Maggie said. She wasn’t much to look at herself, being as black as sin from the coal dust. She’d just finished a shift at the colliery screens, picking lumps of coal out of

serial part 1

THE toll of church bells was stifled by the winds. Sleet clawed my face as I pushed through the flurry. The orangery’s windows had shattered. Whichever way I turned, rattling, shaking trees bore down.

STEP ONE BUY YOUR ORANGES! No one could say my mother-in-law was easy to get on with. “Mum can be rather rude even though she calls it ‘plain-speaking’,” warned Jeremy when we became serious. “Dad cou