[2] In the frame story, set in a Scottish day school, that girl Kitty tells her friend Helen about hating her mother's boyfriend.

Fine won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British author.

The story is told in a cloakroom cupboard during one morning, with occasional interruptions from Liz and Mrs Lupey.

[4] The screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Adapted TV Serial.

Anti-nuclear protests had diminished after the 1991 close of the Cold War so the story was revised to feature a more timely issue, Green politics.