Name: Hope Summers
Birthplace: Somerset, England
Flower: Big floppy English roses
Song: Wind beneath my wings
by Bette Midler
Author: Charles Dickens
Film: Gone with the Wind
TV: Desperate Housewives

Personality:
Hope is beautiful, graceful and a little bit simple. She wafts around the Pulliplove house in floaty dresses, reciting Christina Rossetti and gazing into the distance. She likes walking in the woods with Pollyanna, even though Pollyanna gets openly exasperated when she's trying to show Hope an interesting tree fungus and Hope is busy catching falling leaves to make a wish.

Occupation:
Hope writes surprisingly successful fantasy novels about dragons, unicorns, faeries, etc. The Pulliplove girls aren't sure who buys her books, but it's certainly not them. She churns them out so quickly that Lola May and Elfie once rigged up a webcam to see if they were generated by a computer program. They aren't: she writes them in flowery longhand on scented lavender notepaper.

Favourite food:
Hope isn't that bothered about food - she's always watching her weight - but if there's chocolates missing from the box, she was generally the last person seen near them. (Especially if some of the remaining chocolates have bites out of them.) She's particularly partial to rose and violet creams.

Favourite music:
Enya, pan pipes, what Lola May calls "lift music". Hope thinks the Corrs really rock. Sheryl Crow is a bit noisy for her.

Likes:
Pretty birds, lacy things, bias-cut dresses, floppy hats, flowery hatpins, old fashioned roses, long baths, candlelit dinners with eligible young men, champagne, teeny little bite-sized cakes.

Dislikes:
Cleaning the house, revealing her true age, driving, beer, oafish men, computer games, trainers.

Crush:
Hugh Grant is rather dashing, and until recently she'd have happily let Jude Law open the door for her.

Top Secret:
Hope isn't quite as dim as she sometimes makes out. She has a keen financial brain, and wrangles surprisingly big advances out of her publisher. She hides this fiercely from Emmylou, in case Emmylou decides to hand over the Pulliplove accounts to her.