Mary Wesley

For the whole of Rose's respectable married life, she had kept faith with two men....

A traveller on a train returning to London....

Poppy Carew, smarting and in shock because her live-in lover has left her for a richer woman, is called to the bedside of her dying father, a wonderful, loveable eccentric who dies laughing....

Henry Tillotson, a generous, genial man, rescues Margaret from a disastrous marriage in Egypt and brings her home to the West Country as his new wife....

Laura Thornby is swept by an irresistible desire to interfere when she meets struggling writer Claude Bannister. What she doesn't foresee is that he may write well - and she might fall in love....

Matilda Poliport, recently widowed, has decided to End It All. But her meticulously planned bid for graceful oblivion is foiled, and when she later foils the suicide attempt of another lost soul - Hugh Warner....

Summer 1939 and five cousins gather at the house....

Juno Marlowe hurries away from the thundering planes overhead, having just said goodbye to the two men she has always loved....