Ladies Of Letters

Vera is in urgent correspondence with Lesley and then with Irene herself about Irene's breakdown. Was it the alcohol? or something more sinister?

Vera is in urgent correspondence about Irene's breakdown.

Domestic pressures didn't help, and maybe her new boyfriend Vincent wasn't all he was cracked up to be.

Meanwhile, Social Services are giving Vera a hard time: is her trailer a suitable home for her granddaughter Sabrina? Vera is wrestling with a refit to deal with all the health and safety requirements. Irene replies - but her grasp of reality is limited. She doesn't realise that the woman with the nasty face who visits her is her daughter, or remember Vincent, or understand why she's in a clinic.

Vera and her neighbour - psychic Yasmin - puzzle over Irene's verse account of her hallucinations. Vera decides to hand out some tough love and tells Irene to pull herself together and get off the booze. Yasmin sends 'absent healing' and a crystal.

Lesley writes to Vera in a fury: Karen and her new lover - the trailer park thug Damon - have flown to Oz and sprung Irene from the clinic! Who know where they are!

Vera soon finds out - when Irene writes to her from the outback, where she and her liberators are living rough amongst the kangaroos. She's feeling much better! Vera asks Lesley how she can get in touch with Irene, and confides that now Karen has fled to Australia, social services are much more relaxed about her having custody of Sabrina. A small extension has been built which can now house Damon's mad dog, and Vera has use of Damon's 4x4. So it's not all bad...