Ms Elliot

Anne Elliot’s work life may have its complexities and frustrations, but the demands of her job are nothing compared to those of her dysfunctional family. Her father’s night club business is on the rocks, the family home about to be repossessed and her sister’s solution to her son’s crime spree seems to be found at the bottom of a bottle. Colleague Jamie Benwick's pursuit is as persistent as it is unwelcome, but Anne just can't bring herself to tell him to back off.Then, like a thunderbolt, the past is back in the form of Fred Wentworth, ex-fiancé and minor celebrity, now in her life as the new boss and raking up feelings Anne has been fighting for the last fifteen years.Fred has returned north to take the job of his arch-nemesis Sylvia Russell, fully expecting to find that Anne Elliot is the faded shadow he has been imagining for the last fifteen years. Facing her across the interview table, he begins to realise he couldn’t have been more wrong. The reality of Anne Elliot is something very different.How can either of them pretend that life can continue as normal when the past keeps resurfacing, threatening to shatter the fragile mask of normality?As work settles into a new routine, Anne and Fred seem to have achieved a professional he’s keeping her at arm’s length and she managing…just. But then a horrific accident changes everything, in this modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion.