When she, to her surprise, learns that she is pregnant, her grandparents and older siblings arrange an abortion to eliminate the social nuisance.

Twelve years later Hebe is living alone in a small town in the West Country and her son, Silas, is attending a posh private school.

To make a living Hebe is working as a cook for elderly ladies and supplementing the income by sleeping with their sons and sons-in-law.

Harnessing Peacocks was adapted for TV in 1992, directed by James Cellan Jones and starring Serena Scott Thomas as Hebe.

[2] However, she identified the appalling grandparents in Harnessing Peacocks, who bully the pregnant Hebe, as the nearest she came to a portrait of her own parents in old age.