The Man in Manhattan

Optioned for a movie (2022-23)

As nearly‐weds, Chloe and Mike are excited about their low-key Christmas wedding in Central Park and subsequent relocation to New York, finding it hard to keep their plans for an intimate low key ceremony in shape, especially with family and friends expecting a 'winter wonderland extravaganza’. Native New Yorker Mike, proposed after a heady 2-year love affair, moving in to Chloe’s North London flat soon after, in a rose-tinted haze of excitement. With only a few months to go before the Christmas wedding Mike is offered a fabulous job opportunity back on Wall Street. He’d be crazy to say no. To Chloe's disappointment, Mike leaves for NYC, promising to set things up for their new East-side lives. The Long Distance Relationship is tough ‐ especially on Chloe who is left in London.

It’s all made more difficult by the excitement around the Central Park wedding plans. Mike and his friends plan a stag/bachelor party, bragging how they’ll bring the ‘man to Manhattan’. Chloe’s Mum and cousins are busy hat shopping – excited to bring the ‘hat to Manhattan’, while Chloe’s friends are bulldozing all over her desire for a quiet, low-key wedding as they plan an epic girls holiday in the sun, ready to bring the ‘tan to Manhattan’. All the while Chloe cringes as she watches her wishes to celebrate a marriage and not the circus of a wedding turn into a high-speed train.

To add to the stress, Mike now wants a wedding to impress his new work colleagues and no longer wants the ‘low key wedding’ that they’d been planning. Before she knows it he’s employed Ben Romano, Wedding Planner of the Year to take over. The only problem is that Ben isn’t a wedding planner. He’s a divorce photographer who has been caught up in Mike’s grand plan.

This is a story of temptation vs conscience that affects every character in different ways, making it hard to place ‘blame’ on any one individual.

The Boat House Keeper

Megan lives on her houseboat, Little Buddha, on the Regent’s Canal, London, where she works as an illustrator of children’s books. As current girlfriend to Australian ‘celebrity’ surfer Bruce, she struggles with his arrogance and selfishness, doubtful of his claims to forget the remainder of his round-the-world trip, but putty in his hands.

Her friend, Chloe, lacks integrity and trusts nobody. Hiding her burgeoning bulimia beneath a polished image, she works hard to boost her career as a personal trainer.

Claire Cullen is another friend of Megan’s. Married to the glorious Finbar for the last 22 years she runs her own busy veterinary practice. Rushing from work one evening to meet Fin at a garden party she walks in on him re-adjusting his zipper, a young woman on her knees before him with her long hair caught in his zip. Devastated and shattered Claire gives no second chances, throwing his clothes onto their front garden and refusing to talk to him from that moment on.

Jim is a successful restaurateur on the banks of Lake Maggiore, Italy and is Chloe’s brother. Fluent in both Italian and cuisine he appreciates the aphrodisiac qualities of food, yet is far from happy with his spiralling love-life. He and Meg had once thought they were ‘in it’ for life, once, during their college years. They were complete opposites; she liked to stroll on the sand while he’d lay and make ‘angels’ on it, she loved window shopping but he preferred to spend. From picturesque Northern Italy he finds himself yearning for Meg again, beginning to miss his life in England. When he spots a small, neglected boat Domenica, a few miles along the lake in a small derelict boat house, he buys the sorry-looking boat and throws himself into the project of renovating it, proving pivotal as he assesses his life and future.

Over the summer months the three friends find themselves at the Italian Lakes discovering how we earn trust and how we break it, how, without it, anything is possible and how things can change if you give someone special a second chance.

Take My Breath Away

When Casey Donohue’s fiancée surprises her with tickets for  ‘Luxury Diving Holidays at Elegant Resorts’ she is thrilled - especially after Luke’s marriage proposal a few weeks ago.  The lure of  ‘scuba-diving, with its warm seas and excellent visibility for a luxury diving holiday’ at the Maldives Blue Lagoon Resort, an exclusive PADI Gold Palm Resort dive centre has her so excited that she can’t wait to call her bestie, Eliza and tell her.  Eliza finds it hard to conceal her jealousy as Casey tells her they’re going to learn to dive at Lhaviyana Atoll, the tropical island that she’d always wanted to visit and where she has a client.  Before they know it, best friends Eliza & her partner Frank have knuckled in on the idea and it’s suddenly not only a couples’ holiday, but one that Eliza is keen to take control of promising them the best time ever..

A few days into the amazing holiday Eliza’s body is washed up on the beach. The beach is immediately cordoned off and police are everywhere. Casey, Luke and Frank are beyond horrified to see that she is wearing completely different clothes to the wetsuit and diving gear that she’d been wearing when she went missing and none of them can figure why she would have different clothes on…