Kate Flynn has always been clever and brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate's 43 and has given up her university career to come home and look after her mother in ‘Firenze', their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about him: she knows it's because she's bored and hasn't got anything else to do, but she can't stop. David is married, rational, dependable: the last type to want an affair.

David's 17-year-old son Jamie is also drawn to the old house full of books and history. He is more like Kate than his father is, bookish and clever: he wants to find out all about life from her. He turns up one night at Firenze, drunk and desperate.

Check out an extract from The Master Bedroom taken from newbooks issue 46.