When painter Lucy Lake meets Morten Andersen in Picasso's studio, the handsome Dane makes a poor impression. An arrogant philistine blind to Modern Art, whose scornful gaze makes her feel like a cheaply-dressed fool. But when she discovers his past - he came to Paris to escape memories of a disturbed first wife who recently killed herself - she softens, leading to a marriage where she will become his second 'difficult wife'. In her husband's dark, remote, rural house, she begins feeling the presence of the first wife circling ever closer, moving inside her. But is this ghostly possession or simply an undermined woman driven towards the brink of mental collapse? What price will she pay to save her sanity and her Cubist art? In this Gothic historical thriller, a talented young female artist must fight for survival in a world where men still rule.
Emerging out of lower middle-class mediocrity and semi-educated during the 1980s at a dismal Fenland comprehensive, Tim nevertheless won a place to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Wadham College, Oxford - an opportunity he squandered, like so many others that would follow, through indolence and unjustified conceit. Still, propelled forward like his characters by an ability to tell plausible lies, he secured a position as a BBC director and producer, making many documentaries. Presenters included Sister Wendy Beckett, Neil MacGregor and Simon Sebag Montefiore. He even once won the EU's Best Documentary prize for Racism: A Savage Legacy. Other history drama-docs included Zulu: The True Story and Who Killed Joseph Stalin? Since leaving the BBC with an acceptable payoff and largely living as a kept boy, his penchant for indolence reasserted itself. Finally struggling against ennui and the permanent lethargy of the pampered, he managed to write The Orphans of Hatham Hall. Dividing his time between Camden Town and Andalusia, he lives with an indulgent husband, an indifferent cat and a horribly spoilt Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Louis.
