Marion is smitten by Tom, the older brother of her best friend, an outrageously handsome young man with blond curls and blue eyes. Right from their first meeting, when they are still teenagers. For her, he is the man of her life, and so she overlooks all the signs, every indication that Tom is not interested in her. Not for her as a woman. Nevertheless, she hopes he will propose, and when he finally does, she is happy. Their love will be enough for them both. But Tom has a different life and is caught up in other feelings. All his interest is focused on Patrick, the curator of the museum in Brighton, who has fallen in love with Tom and opens up a whole new world for him. For Tom, marriage is a safe place to hide in a time when homosexuality is socially and legally outlawed. So the two lovers share it until one of them can't take it any longer and ruins three lives. Bethan Roberts tells this novel from Marion's and Patrick's perspective, tenderly and with great empathy. It is a story of wasted years, impossible love and thwarted hopes in the 1960s, when a radical change in the way we live and love was already on the horizon, but was still a long way off.
