Moral Choices Series
The Handbag
Fiona Small knows what it means to struggle.
With two young children, bills that never seem to stop and an ex-husband whose financial support can't be relied upon, every pound matters.
Then Fiona finds a handbag left behind at a bus station. Inside is £850 in cash.
Nobody saw her pick it up. Nobody knows she has it. And for the first time in a long while, Fiona is holding enough money to make life just a little easier.
She knows what she should do.
But doing the right thing is simple when you have nothing to lose.
Isn't it?
The Handbag is a story about temptation, need and the uncomfortable space between knowing what is right and choosing to do it.
Mother
Ruby has been retired from nursing for six months when a stranger approaches her at an outdoor café.
His name is Ian, and he believes Ruby is his mother.
She isn't.
But when he shows her a photograph of the young woman who gave birth to him, Ruby immediately recognises her identical twin sister, Pearl.
Pearl is dead.
Ian has spent years searching for answers, unaware that the woman he hoped to find can no longer give them. Ruby could tell him the truth about his mother and risk destroying the image he has carried with him for years.
Or she could say nothing.
Ian came looking for a mother. Ruby must decide whether to give him the truth instead.
Mother is a story about family, secrets and whether someone has the right to know a truth that can no longer be changed.
Witness
Sue thinks the two men are simply dangerous drivers.
When their car comes speeding the wrong way around a supermarket car park, she swerves to avoid them, lowers her window and angrily tells them exactly what she thinks.
Then she sees the same car racing through traffic minutes later.
The following day, Sue learns that the supermarket was robbed.
The description of the suspected getaway car changes everything.
Sue knows its make, model and registration number.
More importantly, she saw both men clearly.
The police are asking for witnesses, and Sue may have exactly the information they need.
But the men saw her too.
Speaking up could help bring them to justice.
Staying silent might keep her family safe.
What would you do?
Witness is a story about fear, responsibility and the difference between knowing what is right and feeling brave enough to do it.
Life Support
Clive is forty-nine when a catastrophic brain haemorrhage leaves him on life support.
His wife, Rhea, and their three children are suddenly forced into a world of intensive care, medical tests and decisions no family expects to face.
Two tests confirm that Clive has no brain stem activity.
The doctors can do no more.
Now Rhea must consider allowing the machines keeping her husband alive to be switched off.
Her children don't agree about what should happen. Bea cannot accept giving up on her father. Lucas believes they have to listen to what the doctors are telling them. Harry is only seventeen and struggling to understand how his father can look alive when they are being told he is gone.
Rhea wishes Clive had told her what he would want.
Perhaps he did. Perhaps she simply can't remember.
Life Support is a story about love, family and an impossible question: when hope is gone, who should decide when it is time to let someone go?
One Night Stand
They have been close friends for years.
Their marriages, families and lives have grown alongside one another, built on a friendship they believed could survive anything.
Then one night changes everything.
A single mistake between one woman and her friend's husband results in a pregnancy neither of them expected.
There was no affair. No secret relationship. No plan to betray anyone.
But the consequences are real.
As the truth threatens to surface, another friend finds herself caught between the people she loves, knowing that whatever she does could destroy relationships that have lasted for years.
Should one terrible mistake be confessed, whatever the cost?
Or are there truths capable of causing more harm than silence?
One Night is a story about friendship, betrayal, loyalty and what happens when there is no choice that leaves everyone unhurt.
The Promise
Before her father died, Ruth made him a promise.
She would look after her mother.
For years, she has done exactly that.
But after a series of strokes leaves seventy-year-old Alison needing increasing levels of care, the promise begins to consume Ruth's life.
Her husband, Leo, watches their family being pushed further aside. Their children need their mother. Their marriage is suffering. And professional advice increasingly points towards the option Ruth has spent years refusing to consider.
A nursing home.
To Ruth, accepting one would mean breaking the last promise she made to her father.
To Leo, refusing could mean sacrificing the family they still have.
Then Social Services warn that if Alison's needs cannot be safely met, the decision may eventually be taken out of Ruth's hands.
How much should a promise to someone who has died be allowed to cost the people who are still living?