It was widely held that the West Pennine Moor Surgery was the best that had ever been seen. The GP who’d built it had countless devoted patients. Things changed, however, one winter’s night when a terrible accident occurred: one for which the GP felt totally responsible. From that day onward the surgery fell into a terminal decline. Those who remained did so out of loyalty and memories as to what once had been.

Just when the situation reaches rock bottom a new practice manager is appointed: one who offers energy and exceptional skill to turn the fortunes of the practice around. In reality, however, she harbours a very different purpose; one that is predicated on the surgery’s destruction. Any who attempt to frustrate her are summarily punished or dismissed as she assumes total control.

A new receptionist, one with few prospects, aims to uncover the manager’s true motives and tries to stop her. She learns, too late, that a much larger agenda is in force. Ultimately, as the brutal truth emerges the manager, who has outwitted them all, wreaks a terrible and spiteful revenge.

It seems, then, that nothing and no one can save either the surgery or any of those who are associated with it.

“Ultimately, she realised her days of concealment were over. Nothing and no one could stop her now....the triumph that existed on her face in that moment, like that of a captain who had just weathered her ship brilliantly so as to outmanoeuvre her pursuers. Astern of her as she looked back over the Taffrail lay the daft, the destitute, the dispossessed - and those soon to drown.”