At 16, Heather eloped with a man 10 years her senior, but the marriage lasted only five weeks. Now middle-aged and re-married with teenage children, Heather is shocked when her ex-husband re-enters her life. From the author of "Pleasant Vices" and "Just for the Summer".

The residents of the Close were much concerned with crime—preventing it, that is. With all those out-of-work teenagers on the nearby council estate hanging around, stealing, joy-riding and goodness knows what else, it was just as well that they were setting up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

Not that the inhabitants of the Close did not have their own little activities, of course, but these were hardly the same thing. If Jenny and Alan's daughter was caught traveling on the subway without a ticket, and their son was doing a little experimenting with certain substances, and Laura didn't see the need to declare her earnings from hiring out her house to a film crew, and Jenny drove home only just over the legal limit—well, these were quite different matters, not to be compared with what went on in the Estate. And then there was Jenny's discovery, when she advertised flute lessons, that she could work up quite a nice little scheme in a rather unexpected way...

As the leafy London street resounded to the efforts of its citizens to keep crime at bay, Jenny realized that it was her marriage, rather than her property, that needed watching.

Melanie finds herself single again after years of being one half of a couple. Her friends predict loneliness, frustration, and disaster. But Melanie is overwhelmingly excited to be able to do her own thing—she plans a program of behaving badly, after a lifetime of behaving properly.

Alice lives with her second husband in a leafy London suburb. But when her Bohemian mother falls ill, Alice has to go to Cornwall to look after her, and she begins to wonder if she has made the right life choices.

Although Jay is happy, she had always envied her cousin Delphine; her well-organized life and size ten figure. Then Delphine reappears with her third husband. Perhaps Delphine is the envious one.