Nina Stibbe’s fourth novel is set in the fictional town of Brankham in Rutland and finds Susan Faye Warren meeting best friend Norma and husband Roy on the same day in the early 1990s.
She encounters Roy, a keen golfer eight years her senior, while eating breakfast in a cafe near The Pin Cushion, the haberdashery shop where she has a Saturday job. Norma is the daughter of the shop’s owner, and is drafted in one summer as acting manager. She and Susan, an English undergraduate, immediately hit it off despite a warning from Norma’s mother that they will never be true friends.
