The Guilty Party — Marie Joseph

Emma Danton, marrying almost straight from school, goes to live in Lancashire with Mervyn, her husband, a potential bank manager.

They share their house with Mervyn's sister Pat, an ex-nurse who is recovering from a nervous breakdown, a strange possessive woman who quietly challenges Emma's right to bring up her own two children. It is against this tight, cold background that Emma meets Andrew Farlane, an ex-actor, with whom she falls unwillingly and blindly in love.

This is a contemporary novel -- the conflict of a gentle personality behaving entirely out of character when overwhelmed by passion that threatens the security of her marriage.