My beloved son - Catherine Cookson

Ellen Jebeau married a man who did little but dream, and who then died with debt his only legacy. Whatever else her marriage had lacked, however, she had her son Joseph. She resolved he should have all in life she had missed and to achieve that end, she would stop at nothing.

It was Sir Arthur Jebeau, her late husband's brother, who came to her aid, and soon Ellen and Joseph were living at the old fmaily seat at Screehaugh. It was a convenient arrangement, one which Ellen was not slow to recognise could work to her advantage, for Sir Arthur was a widower and Screehaugh had no mistress . . .

That was in 1926, but the working out of so many increasingly intertwined destinies would continue for twenty more years and only come to final resolution with Joseph Jebeau's escape from the traumatic heritage of his mother's ruthlelss ambition and his emergence as his own true self.