Book description
Hebe sits in the darkness and listens to her hypocritical
grandparents and her older siblings discuss how her unexpected
pregnancy must be terminated to avoid the shame it will bring.
Determined to raise her child, she flees into the night with only her
mother's jewellery to support her.
Twelve years later she is living happily alone in Cornwall, whilst
her son attends an expensive private school. Hebe has harnessed her
two great talents - cooking and making love - to make a living for
herself, but when the separate strands of her life become intangled
the even tenor of her days is threatened, and her world changes forever.
Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her
to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the
War Office. Although she initially fulfilled her parents' expectations
in marrying an aristocrat she then scandalised them when she divorced
him in 1945 and moved in with the great love of her life, Eric
Siepmann. The couple married in 1952, once his wife had finally been
persuaded to divorce him.
She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested
development, getting my first novel Jumping the Queue published
at the age of seventy'. She went on to write a further nine novels,
three of which were adapted for television, including the best-selling
The Camomile Lawn. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the
1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.
