Lives: Hill House, Boundary Road

Age: Late 20’s

Appearance: 5’7” tall, slender, with naturally blonde hair worn in a long bob. She has blue eyes

Leonie is attractive and outgoing but tends to lose patience with those that refuse to get caught up in her enthusiasm and can be moody and bad tempered as a result.

Family: Father: Richard

            Mother: Marilyn

            Brother: Andrew

Leonie is the youngest child of Richard and Marilyn Ward. She was born in Woodbury and moved to Milliwick when she was eight. She did not find schoolwork easy and moving to a new school where she had no ready-made friends was a difficult time for her but she managed to keep up with her peers through sheer hard work and effort. By the time she reached secondary school she felt more confident of her abilities but had accepted that she would always be more practical than academic.

At sixteen she decided that she had given education her best shot.  Although her grades were good enough to be able to predict reasonable success at ‘A’ level, she had struggled to achieve them and did not want the pressure of another two years schooling. Her refusal to stay on at school, insisting that she would get to where she wanted to be without doing so, strained the close relationship she had with her father who had expected her to set her goal higher than working in a boutique, which she did after leaving school. When she took her inspiration from the shop and started turning out the latest trends on the sewing machine in her room to sell to friends, she soon saved enough money to buy herself a second-hand car and Richard was forced to admit that perhaps she had been right and was doing what made her happiest, which was all he really wanted for her.

The shop closed when the area was marked for redevelopment and Leonie took a temporary job with a department store while she looked for something more permanent. Her manageress encouraged her to think about taking a business course at the local college and managed to convince her that it was well within her capabilities. She was surprised to find that she was enjoying the challenge and threw herself into the work and the college course with equal enthusiasm. The store was impressed with her attitude and offered her a permanent job.

Leonie dated a number of boys in her teens, none of them seriously until she met Simon. He was a few years older and more sophisticated than anyone she had been out with before and Leonie believed she was in love. She enjoyed sharing the lifestyle that his good job afforded him and was looking forward to settling down but not long after they became engaged his controlling attitude worsened, making her feel inferior and very unhappy. Leonie realised that he thought of her as just another of his possessions and so ended the relationship.

Currently: Leonie works at the department store as manager of the in-store boutique. She is happy to be living at home again with her parents but has the occasional pang of regret as more of her friends get married and settle down.

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LEONIE WARD

Daughter of Richard and Marilyn Ward

Andrew's younger sister