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Back The Other Daughter Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. OCTOBER 2014 London, UK
  4. PART ONE
  5. FEBRUARY 1976 London, UK
  6. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  7. FEBRUARY 1976 London, UK
  8. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  9. MARCH 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  10. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  11. MARCH 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  12. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  13. MARCH 1976 Lausanne/Bern, Switzerland
  14. JUNE 2016 Lausanne, Switzerland
  15. MARCH 1976 London, UK
  16. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  17. MARCH 1976 London, UK
  18. PART TWO
  19. APRIL 1976 London, UK
  20. JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  21. APRIL 1976 Oxfordshire/London, UK
  22. JULY 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  23. MAY 1976 London, UK
  24. JULY 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  25. MAY 1976 London, UK
  26. JULY 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  27. JUNE 1976 London, UK
  28. JULY 2016 Lausanne/Montreux, Switzerland
  29. JUNE 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  30. JULY 2016 Thun/Reichenbach, Switzerland
  31. JULY 1976 London, UK
  32. AUGUST 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  33. PART THREE
  34. AUGUST 1976 London, UK
  35. AUGUST 2016 Lausanne, Switzerland
  36. SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  37. AUGUST 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  38. SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  39. AUGUST 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
  40. SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  41. AUGUST 2016 Montreux/Lutry, Switzerland
  42. SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  43. AUGUST 2016 Lutry, Switzerland
  44. SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland
  45. AUGUST 2016 Lutry, Switzerland
  46. OCTOBER 1976 London, UK
  47. AUGUST 2016 Vevey, Switzerland
  48. SEPTEMBER 2016 London, UK
  49. Author’s Note
  50. Acknowledgements
  51. More from the Author
  52. About the Author

I’ll dispose of it later.

PART THREE

FLEET STREET MANHUNT

The new six-part series Forget-me-Not (ITV, 10.00) takes a career girl’s view of newspapers and the men in them. Pat Powell (Patricia Brake) is an ambitious and attractive young journalist who wants to get to the top and enjoy an old-fashioned manhunt for ‘Mr Right’ at the same time. Aiding and abetting her in the chase is Avril Phelps (Cyd Hayman). Avril is the women’s editor of the paper they both work for and is a sophisticated divorcee who enjoys romantic adventures. [… ] Let’s hope the kissing stops for long enough to leave them time to do some work.

TV preview in the Daily Mirror, 1976

AUGUST 1976 London, UK

SYLVIA

Sylvia hadn’t wanted to act like Valerie. She’d wanted to be encouraging, the older mentor nourishing the journalistic dreams of a young woman in a man’s world. But it was taking all of her effort not to adopt Valerie’s unassailable gaze, frosty demeanour and unfailing rejection of sisterhood, and she wasn’t entirely succeeding. When it came down to it, Diane was bright, ambitious and would clearly make the most of this rare opportunity to get into Fleet Street. Sylvia attempted to screw her internal rage into a ball and throw it in the wastepaper bin – but she missed.

‘We get plenty of requests to feature,’ she said, nodding to the page in last Saturday’s paper, where Ethel and William stared back at her. ‘We put a call out at the end of each week’s column and there’s a backlog of couples who’ve written in, so you won’t run out. You just have to select who you want to feature when and call them up to arrange the interview.’

‘And hope they don’t pop their clogs in the meantime,’ Diane said.

‘It happened once, sadly.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Doris, I think her name was.’ A smile tugged at Sylvia’s mouth. It wasn’t funny. But the conversation only added to the surreal nature of the day. Here she was, sitting at her desk with a considerable baby bump and increasingly swollen feet, mere weeks from leaving the job she’d always wanted, explaining to her replacement that one of the perils of writing a feature about elderly married couples is that they might die before you get to interview them. ‘We sent her husband a bunch of flowers and lined up the next one.’

‘Crikey,’ Diane said.

‘One out of fifty-four isn’t bad.’

Diane snorted. ‘No, I suppose not.’