Pooja Patel
Dreamer. Dancer. Reluctant Tesco cashier. · Age 21
Pooja grew up in the Patel household knowing exactly what success was supposed to look like — a degree, a respectable job, eventually a respectable marriage. She never quite fit the mould. What she loves is dance: garba and dandiya at Navratri, the Bollywood films that first captivated her at seven years old, and a dream — fierce, specific, not remotely practical — of choreographing a West End musical that brings South Asian culture to a British stage.
While her brother trained as a doctor and her cousins collected postgraduate degrees, Pooja finished school and went straight into retail, working a Tesco till in Windstead and auditioning whenever she can afford the train fare. When her best friend Tracey points her toward flexible, better-paid work as a personal assistant, Pooja takes it — never expecting the job, or the man she's working for, to change the course of her year.
“My heart is not made for conventional education; my love is dance and theatre.”
Ambitions and pressures
Pooja's family equates a degree and a stable job with love and protection — and she's spent her whole life feeling like the one who didn't live up to that. Her dream of dance and theatre isn't rebellion for its own sake; it's the one thing that's unmistakably hers.
Phil Rivers
Self-made businessman. Founder of Ray and Co. Learning a new normal. · Age 70s
Phil Rivers built Ray and Co. from nothing — he left school at fourteen, answered to no one, and ran his company the same way he ran his life: on his own terms. A car accident six months before the story begins changed that. He now uses a wheelchair, and the control he spent a lifetime building suddenly feels a great deal harder to hold onto.
He has already gone through two personal assistants by the time Pooja arrives, and he gives her no reason to expect she'll last any longer. Underneath the short temper, though, is a man guarding a lot more than his diary — a past he rarely discusses, and a wariness about letting anyone close enough to see it. What Pooja slowly earns, almost without either of them noticing, is his trust.
“Rule number one: do not sell yourself short.”
A life relearning itself
Phil built Ray and Co. on total control — of his time, his company, his image. The accident didn't just change what his body can do; it took away the one thing he always trusted to fix everything: himself.
One is young, bold and determined to be heard. The other has spent a lifetime being heard and is only just learning how to listen. What happens when their worlds collide is a story about the families we’re born into, the ones we choose, and the courage it takes to let someone else in.