A domestic story set in the 1970s about the fall out within a family when a TV company want to make a film about a archaeologist. His dtr kate + her academic bfriend tom are called to support the flighty widow laura, who now lives with her sister. Emotions rise + tensions abound as old resentments and new traumas lead to a middle class English Melodrama which is a genre to which I am partial and I love penelope lively's easy writing style.