[2] While visiting Frances and Liz, spinster Camilla becomes entangled with a vaguely sinister man she met on the train journey.

Camilla feels her life is dull and uninteresting and the aged Frances has radically changed her painting style due to her increasingly cynical outlook on the world.

"[3] In reviewing the 2011 reissue, Jane Houshman of the Guardian called it a "marvellous, dark novel" and "The writing is so perfectly pitched that one almost resents becoming aware of the novel's elegant structure unfolding itself towards completion.

It aired in 1987 on the ITV network in the UK, starring Joanna McCallum, Fabia Drake and Trevor Eve.

The movie was directed by John Madden and written by Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Prince.