Noel's sister, Ethel, is dying, and for the first time since childhood, he spends a week in her company. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, he discovers more about her past, her fight for women's rights in education, and in the process reasses his own life.
Buried in this past is a secret infatuation for a man who reappears in Ethel's story, and that of her daughter, in a most unexpected way.
Stanley Middleton was born in Bulwell, Nottinghamshire in 1919. He published his first novel, A Short Answer, in 1958 and went on to publish 45 novels in a career spanning fifty years. He was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974 with Holiday. Stanley Middleton died in July 2009.