Two women Daisy and Min meet at a university reunion. Previously inseparable at school and university, they had quarrelled irrevocably when Min had discovered her best friend in bed with her boyfriend,Hugh. Now fifteen years later, Min is married, has two children and lives in Lancashire; and Daisy is on her way tostay with her. Daisy has spent the intervening years at Cambridge a single academic successful in her rather limited world of English literature but not in relationships due, she feels, to an abiding distance for sex. She is prepared to envy her friends apparent happiness and social position. But Min it transpires, is struggling; the family estate is run-down, draughty and a huge drain on her resources; her children are difficult; her mother in law critical and her husband Robert, a classics master, apparently objectionable.