Louise, a widow, rising sixty, has no particular gifts or skills, and after the death of her bullying, braggart husband leaves her almost destitute, is shunted from one to the other of her more or less unwilling daughters on perpetual uneasy visits, with no prospect of her life getting anything but worse. Miriam, socially ambitious, lives in the commuter belt with her barrister husband and children; Eva, an aspiring actress, is in love with a married man; and Anne, married to a rough but kindly Bedfordshire smallholder who is the only one who treats Louise with more than merely dutiful sympathy. Louise knows she really isn't wanted anywhere - until the day she meets a writer of thrillers in a cafe - and he's equally lonely. Written in 1955.