Water Colours

Bea’s search for that happy family life portrayed in fiction, with two loving parents who stay together, is something of a surprise. She has grown up surrounded by such varied models of relationship and family life that you would not expect convention to have such power over the way she sees the world.
There’s her friendship with Marty, uncomplicated by adolescence, which makes it seem that the sunny days of childhood, can simply go on forever; there’s Bea’s grandma, who always wants the best for her; Aunty Eddy and Aunty Gail, who flout social conventions but with dignity and love; or Olivia and Tim, the perfect middle class couple who want only a child to make their lives complete.

Still, despite the warmth of her upbringing, Bea is drawn to search for the mother and father she has never known-as if they can give her life some essential truth it has lacked up till now. And in her search for that truth she is sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by those who clearly love her.

Bea learns along the way that love is where you find it, and that although she hasn’t cracked the storybook perfect family, she still has a life worth living and loving. Water Colours is an unforgettable study of relationships and the complex motivations that feed them at the point where our love for others and our concern for ourselves meet.