Lulu’s intolerable. Sexy, long-legged and ruthless, she wormed her way into her new stepfamily when she was very young and, with spite as her principal hobby, has spent every moment since trying to undermine her dumpy and hardworking stepsister Geraldine. Jobs, lovers, passions – Lulu picks up and drops any and all of these almost as often as she chooses and discards her stylish clothes – all the while confident that Geraldine and her faithfully supportive husband Robert will bail her out of any passing problem.

But everything’s about to change. Because nobody, not even watchful Robert, has ever realised quite how much of Geraldine’s patience with Lulu and her determination to keep all of her family on the rails is based on one small assumption about the mother who spent so many years raising both girls together.

In this, her eighth novel for adults, Anne Fine once again displays her extraordinary facility to unpick the tangled threads of family relationships and – to our astonishment and for our deep amusement – lay them bare.