The book opens in the 1950s with Lottie, an evacuee who's staying with the respectable Holden family and their daughter Celia, where "noise and suppressed hysteria" are the norm. Their small town ways are dramatically disrupted when Arcadia, the Art Deco house overlooking the sea, is taken over by a fast and Bohemian set where "nude painting and uncertain domestic situations" are the order of the day. Adeline, the Queen Bee in the set-up, declares that Lottie needs "to learn to dream". Good advice, except that her dream comes in the shape of Guy, the handsome son of a melon and banana importer. Lottie is instantly smitten, but Guy is engaged to Celia. Forbidden fruit, indeed.

Fast forward to the present and the perils of Daisy Parker. She's has been abandoned by her partner, is the new mother of a little baby, and has taken on the all-consuming project of renovating Arcadia for a businessman called Jones. The owner of the "ocean liner" house, has, up until recently been Lottie Swift. In a series of emotionally rewarding and devastating encounters secrets from the past and present are tantalisingly revealed. --Eithne Farry