New York, late 1840s, and in the wild, noisy, brash and beautiful circus of Silas P. Swift a shadowy, mesmeric woman entrances crowds because she can unlock the secrets of troubled minds. Above them all her daughter sweeps and soars: acrobat and tightrope-walker. People cannot take their eyes from the mysterious woman in the Big Top who can help so many others - but she cannot unlock dark, literally unspeakable, memories of her own. In London memories fester in the mind of an old and venomous duke of the realm. He plots, with an unscrupulous lawyer (and a huge financial reward) against the mother and the daughter: to kill one, and to abduct the other and bring her across the Atlantic to him: She is mine. The actress and mesmerist Cordelia Preston and her daughter Gwenlliam live with their unusual family in the exciting new city among exciting new ideas: the telegraph, the daguerrotype, anaesthesia, table-tapping. And among the dangerous street-gangs of New York also, whose raw violence meets Cordelia and Gwenlliam and those that they love, with unexpected results.

Sometimes successful, often not, the life of an actress is never dull but what happens when you reach fifty? If you're an actor, the work pours in; if you're an actress, suddenly the wrinkles start showing, the boobs sag, that young sprite who's just left college last year is the tops. So it seems, anyhow, to this group of thespians, now all in their fifties, meeting for a drama school reunion. There's Juliet, beautiful, brittle star of the stage, all out for her big screen break; lovely Pauline, a good actress in her own right but often overshadowed by her ebullient actor husband Anthony; blowsy, breezy, sexy soap star Molly; the three wise monkeys Emmy Lou, Franny and dear old Harry; sweet Izzy and gorgeous Terence Blue, Hollywood superstar, heart throb extraordinaire. But age doesn't wipe out desire, ambition or memory. So when the celebrations culminate in an accusation of rape, the past comes flooding back and the present takes extraordinary and unexpected turns.

They all met again at the Drama School Reunion: the Hollywood celebrity, the out-of-work soap star, the understudy, the Shakespearian hero.

Thirty-six years ago, they dreamed of the great parts awaiting them. What they did not know was that the parts would soon dry up, for the actresses. Because they had stopped being young.

But: once an actress, always an actress and on this hot, summer's day it becomes clear that age does not wipe out ambition. Or desire. Or memory. Or love. So when the Reunion culminates in an accusation of rape that dominates every newspaper in the country, the past – sweet, cruel, tragic – comes flooding back, and the actresses become the stars of the story.

Perceptive, shocking, gripping and wise, this could only have been written by somebody who has been there.

London, 1838: the controversial practice of Mesmerism, with its genuine practitioners and its fraudulent chancers, has hypnotised the city. Miss Cordelia Preston, a beautiful, ageing, out-of-work actress terrified of returning to the poverty of her childhood, suddenly emerges as a Lady Phreno-Mesmerist. In her candle-lit Bloomsbury basement she learns to harness her talent - and to finally look towards the future. But success is fragile when you have a past filled with secrets. On a wintry, moonlit night a body is found in Bloomsbury Square, and what began as an audacious subterfuge erupts into a scandal. Cordelia's past is revealed, bringing not only heartache but terror - and the mystery of a cloaked figure who waits for her in the shadowy London streets.