The Iron Facade — Catherine Cookson

Prudence Dudley was a woman who appeared to have everything: an undeniably attractive woman who had already achieved considerable success as a novelist. Yet she remained at odds with life. It all stemmed from the past: her sad rejected childhood and the more recent past of a deeply wounding emotional crisis. Nearing a breakdown, she needed to sort herself out; and since nobody had ever proved so staunch and comforting a support in time of trouble as her Aunt Maggie, she fled to her company to spend three months at a rented cottage in the Lake District.

They encountered David Bernard Michael McVeigh, later to be revealed as the owner of the cottage and what little else remained of the run-down Lowtherbeck estate. His aggressive and overbearing manner offended Pru from the start, but in time she learned that this iron façade was not the whole man and that life had dealt him as raw a deal as ever it had her.

Relentlessly she found herself drawn more and more into the affairs of a strange household where tension was always present. It would have been easy enough to pack their bags and move on to another place, but Pru came to realize that it was by some involvement in the problems of others that she could best move towards solving her own.