Cynthia Kirkpatrick Keeley Hawes Upon her mother's remarriage, Mrs. Gibson's beautiful daughter Cynthia returns from school in France to live with her new family in the provincial English village of Hollingford. Her worldly ways both delight and perplex her more sheltered stepsister, Molly. Soon after Cynthia's arrival, a secret liaison from the past returns to threaten her happiness -- and her new sister's too. Keeley Hawes, whose recent film roles have ranged from a 19-year-old Irish girl in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September to a nymphomaniac in Iain Banks' Complicity, found Cynthia an atypical period heroine. "In these sort of dramas, women are often looking out coyly from under their eyelashes, but Cynthia is dynamic," says Hawes. "She returns from France with modern ideas and fashions that are desperately exciting to the people of Hollingford. They know there's going to be a touch of glamour involved - it's a bit like Marilyn Monroe arriving in Hollingford."