Sixteen-year-old Louise, Edward and Villy's daughter, is beginning to move out into the world. At cooking school, she meets clever, vivacious Stella Rose, and her flashy family; at a London house party, she charms Michael Hadleigh, a famous portrait painter and notorious ladies' man. And at a squalid local drama school, she experiences a fascinating casualness towards language and sex that would shock her parents as much as their secret lives would shock her...

For Polly, now fourteen, the terrors of war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence, from a growing affection for Louise's troubled cousin Christopher, to an increased awareness of her parents, Sybil and Hugh, and their constant charade, even in matters of life and death...

Fourteen-year-old Clary is hardest hit by the war: her father, Rupert, has been reported missing after the harrowing retreat at Dunkirk. While the rest of the family, even Rupert's wife Zoe, gradually accepts that must be dead, Clary steadfastly clings to the belief that he is alive, creating elaborate scenarios to explain his continued absence...