THE BLIND YEARS

Bridget Gether's parents were killed in the wartime Blitz so she had lived with the Overmeers at Balderston, their sprawling property, since she was a child. Unaware that she had been manipulated into agreeing to marry their son Laurence, an encounter with Bruce Dickenson, the son of a neighbouring farmer, opened her eyes to the possibility that she might be making a serious mistake.

Although Bridget told herself she had loved Laurence for years, could she now trust him? Had he been seeing someone else all the time he had been courting her? She decided that there were sufficient grounds of doubt, so she called off the marriage.

However, she had reckoned without the formidable Overmeer family, whose desperate financial straits compelled them to take steps to protect their interests. As for Laurence, he could not forgive Bridget for the humiliation of rejection, so he made his own plans to punish her. But someone else was also planning revenge, the outcome of which would shake the very foundations of the Overmeer family.

Catherine Cookson received and OBE in 1985, and was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She died in 1998.