A Friend of the Family — Nicola Thorne

Tina and Steve seem like the golden couple: rich, good looking with everything they could want except a child of their own. Tina is a very beautiful but temperamental former model, Steve a successful businessman with international interests, but he also wants to develop his stately home in the country as a garden centre and leisure complex. The lynchpin to this enterprise is Louise who, though not unattractive, is solid and sensible and has loyally and devotedly worked for Steve for a number of years, since before his marriage to Tina which came as a shock to her. Louise and Tina are complete opposites, both in looks and personality, and Louise thinks Steve has married the wrong woman and should have realised that she would have been the perfect partner. Her obsession with Steve, her wish to be more closely bound to him, leads her to make the radical suggestion that she should be a surrogate mother to his much wanted child by Tina. The consequences of this offer and the effect it has on the relationships not only of the three people most intimately concerned, but also their family and friends, is the subject of this riveting novel where Nicola Thorne has dared to tackle two contemporary and very controversial subjects.