Fred Fairly, a Junior Fellow of St Angelicus ('Angels'), a (fictional) Cambridge college, is a physicist whose research focuses on the exciting modern field of quantum theory.

As Fred cycles along the Guestingley Road in the dark, an unlit farmer's cart pulls out of a gateway into his path, causing him to crash into a stranger - a young woman by the name of Daisy Saunders.

Noting that the young woman wears a wedding ring, she incorrectly assumes that the pair are husband and wife and she puts them into the same bed to recover.

The driver of the farmer's cart that caused the accident has not been found and this draws the interest of Dr Matthews, Provost of St James and teller of ghost stories.

Fitzgerald's inspiration for the opening of the novel came when she saw through a Cambridge bus window some cows in ecstasy over willow branches that had been broken off by strong winds; she viewed this as an instance of reason giving way to imagination in 'this orderly University city'.

[3] Dillwyn Knox had been a student and Fellow at King's, whose Provost at the time, M. R. James, was - like the Dr Matthews of the novel - a medievalist, palaeographer and author of ghost stories.

[8] Contemporary reviews of the novel were long and enthusiastic, with John Bailey speaking of her 'mesmeric insouciance' and Sebastian Faulks likening it to being taken in a ride in a peculiar kind of car where everything works beautifully but, halfway through and with exhilarating results, "someone throws the steering wheel out of the window".

[13] Fitzgerald's biographer, Hermione Lee, noted that the novel masquerades as a light, comical love story set in Edwardian times, while also raising - but deliberately not answering - questions about the nature of belief, relativity and truth.

[14] Lee held the book to be the most feminist of all of Fitzgerald's novels (though noting that the author did not use that categorisation), dealing as it does with themes of women's struggles, the abuses against them, and their need for solidarity.