The Innocent — Josephine Bell

Nobody ever bothered much with the girl who liked to call herself Lesley. She had spent all her life as a parcel being passed between children's homes and foster parents. Certainly no-one cared enough to report the fact when she finally walked out of her foster parents' Midland corner shop and, like so many young hopefuls before her, set out for London. Lesley added a new surname, Rivers, and with a few pilfered pound notes, had not much else to help her get on in a bewildering big city. And that was when she encountered the Holy Group and their depressing but convenient South London hostel.

Josephine Bell tells a disquieting story of a quasi-religious sect and the way it preys on the minds of the immature, the disturbed and the innocent. Circumstances have fortunately given Lesley Rivers a well developed sense of self-preservation, and she needs every ounce of this to survive a horrific ceremony presided over by the sect's sinister Ruler. However, when she eventually gets a job in the local health food shop, Lesley is to find that the drama is only just beginning.