‘One of her very best’ Spectator ‘Subtle, original and emotionally resonant’ Sunday Telegraph 'It was at Millie's party, on that Friday evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our lives . . .' Zoë is delighted when her widowed mother marries Simon, a generous older man who owns a villa in Nice. She is enchanted by the visits to France that follow, but they come to an abrupt end when Simon suffers a bad fall. Finding themselves thrust into uncertainty and surrounded by well-meaning strangers, Zoë and her mother must learn how - and how not - to trust appearances . . . ‘Brookner in all her wisdom, eloquence and power’ Spectator ‘Anita Brookner has proved herself so fine a novelist that she deserves to be judged always in a class of her own’ Selina Hastings ‘Each book is a prayer bead on a string, and each prayer is a secular, circumspect prayer, a prayer and a protest and a charm against encroaching night’ Hilary Mantel, praise for Anita Brookner