December Flower

Etta's husband George died, and if George could die anything could happen. Etta is overwhelmed with feelings of panic – unable to breathe, to think, to move. Wanting to run home, but there is no home any more, only a house. That's when Etta decides to visit her last surviving relation, a woman she has never met. But Aunt M is bedridden and silent, cared for by a large, colourless housekeeper who treats the old woman as if she's already dead. But Aunt M isn't dead – and Etta is about to learn a new way to live.

December Flower was dramatized as a one-off television play, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Jean Simmons, Mona Washbourne and Bryan Forbes. Broadcast by Granada in the UK, it went out on PBS in the USA and won the Christopher Award, given to, among other categories, television specials that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit".

"She [Allen] is marvellously fluent and unforced, she weaves an unseamed garment. Her story flows and it flows irresistibly. Her craftsmanship is unobtrusive, and impeccable." Sunday Telegraph

"…the clarity and charity of December Flower is an island of quiet hard-won certainties." The Guardian