Just One Life

When you realise you have just one life left to live, how do you make peace with the mistakes of your past? Fran should be looking back on her life with pride. She's risen to the top of the job ladder, having left behind a council housing estate in post-war Glasgow, to forge a colourful, fulfilling career and enjoy all the trappings of success. But instead, Fran is consumed by regret. A shocking revelation has cast her life, and her thirty-year marriage, asunder. She finds herself the full-time carer for her husband, a man she now accepts, she has never loved. The sacrifices she has made, the personal freedoms she has lost, have left Fran crushed. Her free-spirited friend Iona is her one salvation. Their friendship has survived the storms of conflict and loss since childhood, their deep affection for one another the only constant remaining in Fran's life, a life she no longer recognises as her own. Her husband's new brush with death will give Fran the chance to reflect on what she has left, the choices she has made and the two men she has loved and lost. Can Fran find a way through the ruins of her marriage and find inner peace, to make the most of what remains of her life's journey?

Pat Abercromby started her career in the pharmaceutical industry and has lived with her family all over the world, including Singapore, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the USA. During her six years in Saudi Arabia, she wrote for the Saudi Gazette and the Arab News and was a regular contributor to the in-flight magazine for Saudi Arabian Airlines. She hosted a chat show Ahlan wa Sahlan (Welcome) in the country, interviewing people from the diplomatic service, business sector and interesting expatriates. Upon returning to the UK in the 1990s, Abercromby retrained as a massage therapist, specialising in Seated Seated Acupressure Therapy. She is the co-author of Seated Acupressure Massage written with her friend and business partner Davina Thomson, with whom she now runs Wellbeing Direct, a corporate wellness company.