Twenty years of marriage to older Max has seen a busy, contented Prue through the stresses of a resentful stepdaughter and motherhood. Now, Violet has returned with her new husband from New York and, suddenly, Prue is precipitated into a secret life.

The small village in Hampshire and the city are very different places and, as Prue now moves between the two, she traces the boundaries between innocence and difficult knowledge, between the gluttony and surrender of desire and the stark realities that result. Pinpointing the battleground of the modern - and second - marriage, this is a novel of the extraordinary bargains and accommodations that are struck between people who love one another.