Back Cover story to 'Succubus'

Lady Helen Bollington was born Helen Chapman but always known as Nellie, in her poor family home in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in 1750. The town was surrounded by the Kings hunting forest of Sherwood.

Helen’s father, George, was almost always drunk as many men who worked in the drift and deeper mines were. They needed to clear their throats of the dust accumulated after working many hours each day in total darkness, with little or no ventilation. When drunk he was a violent man who abused his wife and family particularly little Helen, the youngest and prettiest of his brood of nine and that was only the number of his surviving children. His wife was now a poor worn out vision of her former beautiful self. George had blighted his youngest daughter for life. Her blemished character would be a prominent feature for the rest of her life. When she was young, she couldn’t remember at what age, she had vowed that one day she would kill her father. 

At 21, she murdered her father and her bullying boyfriend, John Greenwood, then she had to vanish from her birth town and her old life.  She sets off north, to? --she knew not where. Ending up eventually in the remote village of Chipwick, high in the Hambleton Hills of North Yorkshire, where she got a job as a Scullery Maid in the hall of the Lord of the Manor of Chipwick.