Light-hearted contemporary woman’s issues novel about a couple who, on the brink of enjoying semi-retirement, find themselves inundated by their grown up children returning home from unemployment and broken marriages.
Far from suffering from empty-nest syndrome, middle-aged Susanna is trilled to be able to move to a smaller, more manageable house and give up her boring job as a pay clerk in order to realise her life-long ambition designing mosaics. This, she believes, is her time. But it is nineties Britain. Her children find it difficult to survive job cuts, broken marriages etc. Susanna is torn between her duty to them and her towards herself — a situation not helped by her husband taking sides with the children. Not surprisingly she turns to a sympathetic neighbour who happens to have too much time on his hands.
