Those Who Serve
Published by Headline. Jacket illustration: Gary Keane
The Bedford Hotel in Tavistock, Devon is a favourite meeting
place for many of the characters in this book.
Cassandra and Kate are at school together and there they forge a friendship that is to last them throughout their lives.
Cassandra, blonde and beautiful, marries Tom Wivenhoe – a submariner. Kate, serious and loyal, marries Mark Webster – also a submariner.
Among their naval friends are Mark Mainwaring (married to Felicity), George Lampeter (basically bachelor material but snared into an affair by Felicity) and Ralph Masters (married to Harriet).
The book charts their lives through the births of their children (to Cassandra – Charlotte, Oliver, Saul and Gemma: to Kate – twins Guy and Giles), through the breakdown of Kate’s marriage and through Cassandra’s various affairs (including one which results in one of her cast off lovers, Tony Whelan, marrying Liz).
It is her last affair, with lawyer Nicholas Farley, which is indirectly responsible for the death of her daughter Charlotte.
PLEASE NOTE:
My publishers in the USA,
St Martins Press,
have published this book under the title
‘First Friends’.