Alicia and Emma, mistress and maid, unequal companions, and lovers, trace their history in episodes.From Edwardian Worcestershire, to the Isle of Lesbos, to the London Blitz, through joy and pain, enlightenment and disillusionment, meeting the horrors and cynicism of wartime, and perhaps finding redemption in a return to childhood, they stumble through the thickets of love and sex together and apart. Have either of them had a choice as to how their lives ran? Morgana Somerville's terse, vital fiction tells their story through the eyes of Emma Hendry, the servant who becomes her mistresses's companion and carer during a turbulent period of Britain's history.