A beguiling collection of short stories from award-winning author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley.

Lottie announces at the breakfast table that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger.

Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a composer of religious music and lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior. It is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties tested but holding, and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments.

Evoking a world that expands beyond the pages, it marks the beginning of what is an astonishing collection to treasure.