Claire - widowed and alone in a foreign country, her children having left home - is in a vulnerable position, and the headmaster of the school at which she is teaching quickly realises this. When he makes her a target, her self- confidence is rapidly undermined and she finds herself desperately hunting for some sort of stability. As her world crumbles around her, she becomes increasingly dependent on others. but there are things she has yet to learn about love. Dorothy Cottrell was born in Scotland in 1953. Educated at Edinburgh and Leicester universities, she began her career as a...

It is ten years since Claire Shaw's husband Richard died in a car accident. Claire's three children have now reached adulthood and Claire herself is emerging from an unsuccessful stint in the Middle East and a draining love affair. So she decides to move to America and take a teaching job in Miami, to live on her own the dream that she and Richard had had together. At the end of a year in the US, she feels ready to return to Britain. Settling into a new teaching job in Edinburgh, she tries to establish a new direction in her life. However, making a new life for herself in her own country is...