Product Description
Twenty-two-year-old Margot Seaton meets Paul Rayburn at a party. He is six years older, funny, impulsive, and charming. She's immediately taken by his role-playing, his funny voices and accents, his whimsy. And in a spur-of-the-moment decision, agrees to marry him only days after they meet.
Ignoring the small voice in her head that urges caution, and ignoring all the good advice her parents ever gave her, she begins a life with a man she scarcely knows.
Initially, it's fun. But then Paul begins dictating the terms of her life, where she can and cannot go, what she should and shouldn't do. She must pay -- initially in small but upsetting ways -- for what she wants. But as time goes by, the payments evolve into ever worse acts of abuse.
Margot is being harmed, physically and emotionally, and she's too ashamed and too frightened to confide in her parents. So the assaults continue, growing worse with the passage of time. Until, finally, fearing for her life and with the support of her parents, Margot runs.
She finds work keeping house for Cameron Harley and his father Claude. It is a surprising and ill-kept sanctuary where Margot gradually rediscovers herself and her ability to trust others.
Ignoring the small voice in her head that urges caution, and ignoring all the good advice her parents ever gave her, she begins a life with a man she scarcely knows.
Initially, it's fun. But then Paul begins dictating the terms of her life, where she can and cannot go, what she should and shouldn't do. She must pay -- initially in small but upsetting ways -- for what she wants. But as time goes by, the payments evolve into ever worse acts of abuse.
Margot is being harmed, physically and emotionally, and she's too ashamed and too frightened to confide in her parents. So the assaults continue, growing worse with the passage of time. Until, finally, fearing for her life and with the support of her parents, Margot runs.
She finds work keeping house for Cameron Harley and his father Claude. It is a surprising and ill-kept sanctuary where Margot gradually rediscovers herself and her ability to trust others.
About the Author
Charlotte Vale-Allen was born in Toronto and lived in England from 1961 to 1964 where she worked as a television actress and singer. She returned to Toronto briefly, performing as a singer until she emigrated to the US in 1966. She sold her first novel Love Life in 1974. Prior to this book's publication she contracted to do a series of paperback originals, with the result that in 1976 three of her books appeared in print. Her autobiography, the acclaimed Daddy's Girl, was actually the first book she wrote but it wasn't until 1980, after she'd gained success as a novelist, that the groundbreaking book was finally published. One of Canada's most successful novelists, with over seven million copies sold of her 39 books, Ms. Allen's work has been published in all English-speaking countries, in Braille, and have been translated into more than 20 languages. The mother of an adult daughter and grandmother of twins, since 1970 she has made her home in Connecticut.
