Challerton

When a family of house renovators take on their final, and largest challenge yet, the last thing their 19 year old daughter, Anne, is expecting is to time travel, save lives, change history, eradicate half her family, and set up the world's greatest private collection of 20th Century art. Anne Kindersley and her parents purchase Challerton Hall when it is a terrible, dilapidated condition. Set within many acres of overgrown land, the house will be their greatest challenge yet. But when Anne discovers something unusual, hidden within a wall, she sets off a train of events that forever changes her world, and other's. Removing a window ledge one day she finds a rolled up paper package containing a beautiful old nightdress. Having cleaned it, she decides to wear it one night and immediately begins to hear strange sounds. Sounds of people walking and talking. Sounds of a party. When she steps through the connecting door from her room she finds a very different world. The house in all its previous glory. The house from another time. Over one hundred years earlier. She follows the sounds and interrupts a fine Edwardian diner party. She thinks at first that she is invisible, but she is wrong. They can see her. Chased through the house she makes it back to her own room and her own time. It is incredible! She begins to secretly explore the house and soon makes contact with Lydia, the daughter of the owners. At first wary and angry at Anne's intrusion, Lydia becomes fascinated by this stranger and together they begin to satisfy their own needs to bridge their different forms of loneliness. A beautiful friendship begins to form. But a problem soon arises, when Lydia tells Anne that she and her family are to venture soon to America. They are to travel on the ship everybody is talking about. The Titanic. Anne must prevent Lydia from travelling, straining their fledgling friendship. She succeeds by showing Lydia 'impossible' photographs, and by having Lydia feign illness. Furious at cancelling their journey, Lydia's parents subject her to a campaign of doctor-led curation, including limiting her food. This bonds the two young women further as Anne introduces the Edwardian teenager to pizza, Jaffa Cakes and jelly beans. The ship sales without them and sinks without them. There were to die. Now they do not. Anne has saved their lives but at a dreadful cost. When she returns to her room, after the sinking, Anne finds a very different place beyond the door. Gone is the mess, the boxes, the saw horses and dust. In their place is a pristine stately home complete with a vast art collection. She has changed the history of the house. Where are her parents? Where's all her stuff? Anne triggers an alarm and is chased back through the doorway by the security team. Confused and terrified, she explains to Lydia that everything is different. It is now Lydia's turn to aid her and keep her hidden. When news of the sinking reaches Challerton, Lydia's parents forgive her and want to know how she knew. Lydia tells them of Anne and they all finally meet. Lydia's family welcome her and thank her. Charles, Lydia's brother, is particularly taken with her. Together they hatch a plan to explain Anne's arrival in the house. But Anne cannot stay. She must go back. She must try to find her parents. Borrowing servant's plain clothes she says a tearful goodbye and heads home. She is immediately caught and arrested, suspected of being an art thief. An art thief with a thing for wearing an Edwardian nightdress. The police are baffled to discover that Anne has no records of any kind. She appears not to exist. Her father has never existed. Anne is devastated. She has somehow managed to eradicate half her family line. Unable to charge her with any crime, but unhappy with her story, the police section her for a supervised psychological assessment in a nearby institution. Anne soon escapes the 'nuthouse', as she calls it, and makes her way back to Challerton where, in the nearby village she is recognised by Sarah, the Keeper of Art for the Challerton Collection. Sarah recognises Anne not from a police mugshot but from a fine oil painting in the house. A painting of Lady Anne Padgett, who married Charles and started the collection. Anne realises it is her. She must get back to Lydia's time. Helped by Sarah, who risks her job in doing so, Lydia makes it to the connecting doorway only to be stopped by Josh Bryant, head of security. He will not let her through. By threatening to destroy a work of art, Anne manages to run through the doorway and, for a brief moment both Sarah and Bryant see the house from the past. She was telling the truth. Anne tearfully finds Lydia and the Challerton collection, fuelled by her knowledge of the coming century plus a handbook of 20th Century art, is born. She thanks Sarah with a very special, and precious gift. A gift that has sat waiting for decades in a legal office. Challerton is a tale of time-slipping, loneliness and friendship. A collision of two different times and very different worlds drawn together by a terrible tragedy and a rolled up cotton nightdress. It also gives her the chance to never sand another door frame again.