Barbara Peirson

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.

Over the course of four decades, the personal lives of a quartet of Newcastle friends—Nicky, Geordie, Mary, and Tosker—intertwine with various political machinations, often for the worse: slum housing projects, police corruption, the rise of Thatcherism, political sleaze, and specific events like the 1984 Miners' Strike.

After taking his young son Roddy to a remote Northumberland village, Peter Greenbank meets a violent death, leaving the boy alone with no family to speak of. Roddy is adopted and raised by Kate Makepeace, a good friend of his father’s, and develops a close friendship with Hal and Mary Ellen. But their sibling bond is put to the test as they mature. The hidden secrets of the past are painfully unearthed as their lives are intertwined by a tragic destiny.