Westminster

Amber Celeste Reynaud, a young schoolteacher of Huguenot descent, and proud of it, is passionately keen to enter British politics as a member of the Ecology party. Her bête noir is the rich and famous MP for the Business party, Catherine Fitzwilliam. Daughter of a baronet, she is married to a wealthy banker and lives in a fabulous, listed property. Amber loathes her and everything she stands for. A chance meeting in a London theatre leads to a far from polite outburst from Amber, for which she is ashamed. But Catherine's teenage son had, after all, poked her painfully in the back with his umbrella. Amber teaches sports and English at a state school in the Brighton area. When she is summoned by the head teacher to meet a prospective new entry to her class in the winter term, it is Catherine and her son who she finds sitting in the Head's study. Sam, who Amber has realised is on the Asperger Spectrum, insists he leave his private school to join Amber's class. Against the Head's better judgement, Amber persuades her to give the boy a chance. Amber lives in a marriage of convenience with her husband, Ian. She has never questioned her indifference to sex, believing she needs all her energies to flow into her career ambitions. Now she recognises that the looks the very married Catherine gives her are far from innocent. And strangely, they don't leave her cold either…

Anna Westlake is a jobbing political journalist living in Canterbury with her wife, a successful professor. After jumping in for a TV interview outside the Houses of Parliament to help out a sick colleague, she learns that the head of features is impressed by her performance. She is summoned by the BBC, where she is offered the chance to host a late evening political discussion programme. On the way out of the building a defective lift literally pushes her into the arms of the beautiful and heavily pregnant sports anchor, Jessie Sutherland. Anna is fascinated by the woman, whose private life is shrouded in mystery. After a lengthy preparation time, the programme Anna Westlake Live goes on the air and is an immediate success. It catapults her to fame, but her home life becomes increasingly problematic. Her wife finds it difficult to cope with the new balance of power in their household. Anna and Jessie work in the same building and inevitably meet again. All is not as it appears in the life of the sports reporter with two children. They grow closer as the cracks widen in Anna's marriage.

Sofia Morozova is a leading soloist in the Covent Garden Royal Ballet company. She is unhappily married to an older man and together they have a drink problem, which impacts on her status within the dance company. Her innate discipline means that she fights through the alcoholism to preserve her career. Despite her talent, the spiral is downwards. A car accident after an alcohol-infused dinner party leads to two fateful meetings which will alter her life dramatically. Can Sofia escape her alcoholism? And can she cope with the irresistible pull she feels to the mysterious garage mechanic, who most definitely isn't who she appears to be? The third book of The Westminster Series plays in and around Covent Garden and Westminster. The politicians Catherine Fitzwilliam and Amber Reynaud, whose story was told in Book One, In Private, weave in and out of the narrative.