Lucy White can't quite believe what's happened to her happy, ordinary life. Ending up homeless - not to mention husbandless - has come as an almighty shock. All she wants to do is lie low for a while, but when she arrives in a quiet street in South London she's in for a surprise.

The residents of Farewell Square are anything but quiet. There's a housewife with a secret that needs to be shared, a publicist whose behaviour outside office hours would shock his clients and an artist who can't seem to control her lodgers. They're as intrigued by Lucy as she is by them, and as she's drawn into their midst, she realises that life can be kind as well as cruel. And that no one has to be lonely if they don't want to be.