Victoria Scott

A secluded house. A lost notebook. A wartime secret.

1942: Young Irish nurse Ellen arrives at May Day House, tasked with helping the men there rehabilitate. But there’s something strange about the house, surrounded by water, on its own island in the Thames. And then there are the men: traumatised by their experiences of war, and subject to troubling methods in a desperate race to get them back to duty. As Ellen gets drawn into the world of May Day House, she starts to realise this will be no place to hide away from her own troubles…

2013: Philip and Meredith are the proud new owners of May Day House. Following a string of tragedies, the couple have moved to the area in search of a new start. But all is not what it seems in the riverside community. As their plans for the rundown house meet resistance from the neighbours, Meredith finds herself slowly unravelling: she hears voices on the water, sees figures where there can be no one there. When she finds an old notebook from the war, she seeks solace in the stories about the former patients of the island.

But will shadows from the past threaten her future happiness – and even her life?

Connie Darke is trying to run away from the traumas in her past, and it’s led her home, to the small rural council estate she left almost 20 years earlier.

Matilda Reynolds has spent most of her long life in the Worcestershire village of Stonecastle, and she’s content there, with her animals and her solitude. Until a fall lands her in hospital, and Matilda has to turn to her strange young neighbour Connie for help looking after her home.

Out of their tentative arrangement, each woman gains a new sense of community. But before long, that community comes under threat when the council decides to sell the estate, to make way for expensive developments.

Connie and Matilda are determined to fight for their home – whatever it costs them.

She gave you her baby. Now she wants her back.

Nineteen-year-old Michelle has had a tough life, to say the least. Then she gets pregnant. She is convinced she would be a terrible mother but having grown up in care, she cannot bring herself to subject her child to the same fate.

Amelia and her husband have dreamed of having a family for years, but have lost all hope after the worst kind of tragedy. Then they are offered the chance to adopt baby Grace, and it feels like they finally have everything they’ve ever wanted.

But then Michelle decides she wants her daughter back, and it’s up to the courts to decide. What is best for Grace – a mother’s love, or a stable home? Whatever the ruling, one thing is certain: neither woman’s life will ever be the same again…

Patience tells the story of a family struggling with the decision to put their severely disabled daughter into a high-risk gene therapy trial. Mum Louise is trying to hold everything together, as usual, but she’s almost at the end of her rope. Husband Pete is working abroad, other daughter Eliza is busy living her life in London, and Patience is always in and out of hospital. Something’s got to give. So when Louise hears about a pioneering gene therapy trial that could transform Patience’s life, and hers, there’s no question that Patience should take part.

But Pete doesn’t agree, and Eliza, who is dealing with her own mess, is stuck in the middle. Despite not being able to talk, Patience has plenty to say about it – and not all of it good. The stakes are high. The prize: a normal life. But what is normal, anyway? Patience has no idea, but she may be about to find out.