大象传媒

As the youngest daughter of the Aldridge clan, Alice Carter has always had some big (wellington) boots to fill. Somehow, she struck the sweet spot between the tireless work ethic of her eldest two half-siblings, Adam and Debbie, and the party lifestyle of her free spirit sister Kate. She worked diligently to qualify as an aeronautical engineer, but was no stranger to letting her hair down either.

Recently, however, cracks have started to appear in Alice’s high-achieving façade. She’s been subject to her relatives’ expectations that she’ll start a family as well as mounting pressure from work. With increasing regularity she is reaching for a glass (OK, bottle) of wine to de-stress. The confident Alice has become chaotic, and it showed in her work performance. No longer employed as a farm rep with Pryce Baumann, Alice was persuaded to take up a role on the family farm. With Alice’s life at a crossroads, we look back on the events in her life which led her to where she is today.

On 29 September 1988, Alice Margaret Aldridge was born. Yet there was to be no happy family photo in the hospital to mark her arrival. In a Jilly Cooper-esque dalliance, her father Brian had had his head turned by Mandy Beesborough, organiser of the local Pony Club. He’d met the flame-haired riding instructor the previous year, though no one quite knows whether their relationship progressed beyond a flirtation. They were close enough, however, for Brian to spend a day at the races with Mandy while Jennifer was in hospital giving birth to Alice. Brian had been confident the baby would be a boy, who’d go on to take over the Aldridge empire, and struggled to hide his disappointment when he discovered Alice was a girl. Alice proved to be smart and ambitious, and her diligent nature led her to far exceed Brian’s expectations; so much so that recently he’s been only too keen for her to take on a job at Home Farm.

Initially Alice wanted nothing to do with her brother Ruairi

New arrival: Ruairi joins the family

The end of Alice’s A-Levels should have been a cause for celebration, yet her high spirits were brought down with a bump, and not thanks to a hangover. The day after her exams finished, Brian confessed to Alice that not only had he had an affair with the late Siobhan Hathaway, he was also the father of her son, Ruairi. While Alice had been sitting her exams, Brian had been in Ireland seeing out Siobhan’s final days as her cancer took hold. This wasn’t all: four-year-old Ruairi was going to come and live at Home Farm. Alice was furious and wanted nothing to do with her younger brother. She moved in with her best friend Amy, then on to South Africa. After several months abroad, she returned with a new mindset, bearing gifts for all the family – including Ruairi. Her grown up attitude stuck, and from then on she welcomed the new addition to the Aldridge clan.

After a weekend together at Bestival on the Isle of Wight, Alice’s friendship with Christopher Carter blossomed into something more. Jennifer secretly hoped it would be a summer fling, but the pair stayed together when Alice enrolled at the University of Southampton. Two years into their relationship, they embarked on a road trip around the US, and returned home with some news: they’d got married in Las Vegas. Jennifer was appalled at the idea of being related to a member of the Horrobin family (Susan, Chris’ mum, would now be Jennifer’s opposite number), while Brian held out hope that the union would be Alice’s ‘starter marriage.’ Defiant Alice proved them wrong, however, as the pair are still going strong a decade later.

Read more about Alice and Chris

Alice graduated with an MSc, and she and Chris settled into married life. But ambitious Alice felt trapped in her job as an aeronautical engineer. Unbeknownst to Chris, she applied for a job in Canada and they rowed when he discovered she was going for an interview in Vancouver.

While she was abroad for the interview, Chris was involved in a devastating accident, when a spooked horse he was tending kicked him in the chest. Chris was admitted to intensive care with numerous internal injuries. Alice came straight home to look after him and while his prognosis had been bleak, Chris eventually made a good recovery. Alice used her job offer from the Canadian firm to leverage her position in her existing role, securing a promotion and better future prospects. For now, Alice wouldn’t be moving anywhere.

Three years on, Alice needed a change of scene and secured a job as a rep for a farm tech company, Pryce Baumann. She got off to a flying start, negotiating a 20 per cent pay rise and increase in holiday before she had even begun. She put aside her imposter syndrome and held her own well in a man’s world. But her success didn’t last forever…

Having grown up in a house with a wine cellar, and with a father who’s something of a connoisseur when it comes to a vintage bottle, it is perhaps no surprise that Alice’s crutch of choice is alcohol. She’s often the life and soul of any night out, but in recent years her drinking has become less party-focused and more problematic. Perhaps her most public incident was at Nic Grundy’s wake in 2018. She drunkenly regaled a bereaved Will with tales of her own sorrows, then rounded on Nic’s grieving mother before being escorted out. She was contrite in the weeks that followed, and while she has had fewer public outbursts since, her heavy drinking has continued.

Recently, Alice has found herself in a catch-22 situation: pressure to perform better at work led her to seek solace in drink, yet her drinking made her performance worse. Seeking Dutch courage in a bottle of whisky, Alice confessed to Brian that she jumped before she was pushed from Pryce Baumann. Hearing her side of the story, Brian saw sense in her decision.

Following Adam’s accident and with Alice newly unemployed, Brian insisted that she take on a job at the family farm. Alice found herself thrown in at the deep end organising logistics for harvest from day one. With her new role requiring her full attention, it’s just as well Alice and Chris have made the smart move to stop drinking during the week. But how long will it last? Could Alice’s move to Home Farm prove to her critics that they were wrong… or is the worst yet to come?