Once there she didn't want to leave and ended up staying for nearly a year. She returned the following summer, but this time chose a big industrial city where she taught English and befriended a student and his family. The youngest son, 'Vlad', was only twelve, shy and very intelligent. Once more Tessa was emotionally hooked. Back home in the Scottish Highlands, she organised for Vlad to be sponsored by her old boarding school. He aced his classes, but, conflicted in the wake of his extraordinary experience, turned down a full-time place. They lost touch; however, the pull of Romania eventually proved too much and, five years on, Tessa returned. Life would never be the same again.

    This is Not for You is a memoir which vividly describes the memories of growing up in a dysfunctional environment and how these circumstances developed a spirit within the narrator. This is a story of resiliency and drive to overcome the extreme adversities that addiction and poverty can create in the life of a young child.

    Then his body is discovered. Her cousin Michael is found guilty of his murder and incarcerated in a secure psychiatric unit.Four years later, now divorced and back in the police force, Rachel discovers that Michael is being released to a less secure step-down unit, with his freedom a likely eventuality. Unable to cope with this, she decides upon revenge, assuming a new identity to hunt him down and kill him. However, as she closes in on her target, her friend Jonathan, a journalist, uncovers some unnerving information about her mother and others in her family and begins to suspect that Rachel’s perception of the truth might not be as accurate as she thinks – that she might be about to murder the wrong man…