Nobody at The Eyrie is quite like Red Dora - in her eighties, she's a Scots ex-Communist, ex-Trotskyite who fought in the Spanish Civil War. With her fiery brand of radical anticapitalism, she conjures plans of political sabotage and computer hacking. She rails at a society that seems to have forgotten its political roots and a government that doesn't care. But beneath her rage lies a more intimate disappointment, a tragic death she has yet to come to terms with. Eirlys is a madly patriotic Welsh woman with a brass dragon on her door. She is the 'mother' of the The Eyrie's little clan - always providing tea and sympathy. Little do the other residents suspect that Eirlys was once in prison...Hannah comes to The Eyrie to escape years of boredom in a dreary middle-class marriage to a man she never loved. Reveling in her new found freedom, she finds that life at The Eyrie offers surprising new opportunities and an unlikely co-conspirator in Red Dora.