The Summer House

Norfolk, 1920. Barbara Bosgrove has lived in the market town of Melsham all her life, and is looking forward to the annual Harvest Supper dinner and ball the first since the dark days of the First World War.

George Kennett, a fiercely ambitious man, has had his eye on Barbara since spotting her with her great friend Penny, and Penny’s brother Simon. He begins a slow and steady courtship and Barbara is eventually won over, agreeing to marry a man she believes she can rely on. Little does she realise how wrong she can be. Worn down by George’s unfaithfulness during their marriage, Barbara feels she has lost all the vitality of her youth.

But Simon is not prepared to let Barbara lose sight of the woman she really is the woman he has always loved. He reawakens Barbara’s passion and fighting spirit, but at what cost?

Julie Monday, abandoned by her mother and raised in a children’s home, enjoys a rare moment of happiness when at the age of eight she visits the Essex seaside and meets eleven-year-old Harry Walker. They spend a happy few hours together, but at the end of the afternoon, she must return to the Foundling’s Hospital, and Harry goes home to his family. Ten years later, they meet again. Fated to be together, they marry just before the outbreak of the Second World War. But it’s now 1939, Harry has enlisted in the Royal Air Force, and Julie must face the blitz in wartime London alone with their son.

Travelling back from work one day, Julie is caught in the chaos of a direct hit. Rescued from the destroyed air-raid shelter, but injured and with severe memory loss, Julie is given a new identity as Eve Seaton. But it is not easy to become a different person; plagued with disturbing flashes of memory that she doesn’t understand, forgetting her former life as Julie Monday proves impossible. She must make a decision: should she make a new life for herself as Eve, or struggle to recover the pieces of a shattered identity?

November 1920. Russia may have endured the Revolution, but a brutal civil war still rages. As brothers are pitted against each other in battle, thousands of Russians flee as the threat draws ever closer. As distant relatives of the Romanovs, the Kirilov family is never far from suspicion, and closer to danger than most. When tragedy strikes, four-year-old Lydia Kirillova is separated from her family. The only key to her identity is the opulent jewel concealed in her petticoat.

Struck by the child’s plight, the benevolent diplomat Sir Edward Stoneleigh brings her to England, where she grows up well-educated, wealthy, and surrounded by a loving family. Yet it is not enough. Unable to recall even her own birth date, Lydia yearns to know the truth about her heritage - the charming Nikolay Andropov offers her the perfect opportunity to do so. Invited to join him on a trip to Russia, Lydia jumps at the chance to discover more about the past she finds increasingly difficult to remember. But when reality sets in, is all as it seems? With the Second World War looming, Lydia’s situation becomes desperate. Will she ever find a place to finally think of as home?