The Westminster Series

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.

The renowned ballerina, Sofia Morozova is an alcoholic in a loveless marriage. She is barely holding onto her career having made an enemy of the ballet director. An accident involving Catherine Fitzwilliam’s chauffeur driven car forces her to lurch to a nearby garage, where she encounters a fascinating mechanic, Hailey Summers. The experience shocks her into attempting to go cold turkey. As she battles her alcoholism, she is drawn into Catherine Fitzwilliam’s orbit, where she finds love and support, and a new found strength in her dancing, despite her home life pulling her in the other direction. And Hailey Summers is not what she seems. The story centres around the Royal Ballet Company at Covent Garden, but culminates in a terrifying experience in the sinister corridors of the Houses of Parliament.

Calandra Smith, hobby ornithologist in her final year of school, gains the requisite examination passes with distinction to secure her place at Oxford University. In order to fulfil her ambition to work in politics she aims to study PPE, Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She is summoned to meet her glamorous prospective tutor, Dr Victoria Kestrel, who encourages her to take a gap year. Which she does, living for nearly a year in Germany and working for an environmental institute. Away from home and family she discovers her sexuality, her thoughts all too often returning to the stunning tutor awaiting her at Oxford.

The rules against fraternising are strict, and Victoria Kestrel is determined to uphold them, despite the obvious and growing attraction to her star pupil.

Calandra’s Oxford years are spent studying, playing football and making friends. Sam Fitzwilliam, son of Catherine Fitzwilliam and Amber Reynaud is also an undergraduate and she is introduced to the family.

Throughout, her emotions are dominated by her feelings for Victoria. Will this frustrating relationship ever lead to the happiness both women yearn for?

The dreaming spires of Oxford play a leading role in this the fourth book of the Westminster Series.