Synopsis for “Every New Beginning”

Kathie Harris has a dark secret in her past.

At the age of 18, she killed someone.

She has spent the subsequent thirteen years trying to forget.

Only two other people know - the man she killed for and the man whose loss she facilitated.

Thirteen years after she fled the city to hide as a lecturer in Aberystwyth, Kathie returns to Manchester.  A failed affair and a terminated pregnancy are the triggers for her return.

The story begins with Kathie re-acquainting herself with the city, after she accepts the offer of a lectureship at the newly expanded Manchester University.  Her new boss is her old schoolfriend Mike, who begins to take an interest in the reason she left Manchester in the first place.

She experiences a chance encounter with her first lover, Jack, a journalist with whom Kathie became involved when she was 17.  It is with Jack that she shares her dark secret, a secret that also involves a local author who has since gone on to great things.  Jack is selfish, manipulative, twisted and predatory, and still has a hold over Kathie, based on their mutual past.

Her return to Manchester sees a re-encounter with Phil Cousins, a photographer and old rival of Jack's.  They are thrown closer together at a dinner party thrown by Mike, and begin an affair that pulls Kathie back into Jack's world.

Unsure of what, if anything, the others she is involved with know of her secret, Kathie navigates her way through her return to Manchester.

In the end, her secret is betrayed by an unexpected source.