Forbidden love and dark secrets

FROM The Married Woman When Kate’s husband, Dermot, cancels their holiday to Spain for the third time, she goes alone. There she meets an Irish artist living by the sea…

She longed to ask how he felt about her and regretted that line she had drawn between them on the first night. ‘Kate?’ She turned her head. He smiled and his fingers traced the shape of her face. There was a silence, an intense holding of breath as he moved closer to her, and lit a flame which coursed between them. They lay skin to skin and she could feel his heart thudding in time with hers, a symphony, a wild Beethoven Fifth cacophony.

Their lips reached and came together. His arms enfolded her body and drew her into him. She didn’t think that was wrong, she didn’t think at all.’ FROM Who Is Faye? Set in Ireland and Australia, the novel looks at the explosive emotional fall-out when a family’s dark secrets can no longer be hidden…

Underneath all the happiness and contentment, a destructive fear still lurked deep within Carmel. It turned her into an overprotective woman, terrified to let Helen out of her sight. Weighed down by guilt which sat on her shoulder like a vulture.

‘Mum, why have I no gran and granddad? Where are they? And I’m the only one in the class with no uncles and aunts.’ Helen stared accusingly in at Carmel with wide w blue eyes.

‘Your grandparents are in heaven, and all our relations live a long way from here, on the other side of the world.’ ‘Can we go and see them?’

‘No, I’m sorry, it’s too t far away.’ The questions were never-ending.