Blast From The Past: Ben Elton

When you're in bed alone and the phone rings at 2.15 a.m., you know that something is wrong. Only someone bad would ring at that hour. Or someone good with bad news, which would probably be worse. The answering machine kicks in with your very own Blast From the Past. In the early 80s, Polly was a seventeen-year-old ideological peace protestor and Jack was a U.S. Army captain stationed at England's Greenham Common and they had a secret and very unlikely affair. No two people could have had more to argue about, save that they couldn't live without each other, yet one day Jack came to the conclusion that he loved soldiering more than Polly and sacrificed their love to be a career army man. Now, sixteen years later, Polly is a lonely thirty-something social services employee and Jack is a four-star general who has returned to Britain to find her, his only true love. With only one night to resolve their differences, and a knife-wielding stalker lurking in the shadows, for everyone concerned this will be a night like no other. Cover photograph by Bruce Ayres.