When Percy and Betty Harlency abandon their seedy Streatham pub, for the Copper Kettle Tearoom in Kent, life for their daughter April changes dramatically. She is befriended by the wonderfully dangerous Ruby, whose red hair and brutal home life account for her love of fire and by the immaculately dressed Mr Greenridge who likes to follow her around the village. Shena Mackay has written a rare evocation of a 1950's childhood- mingling the innocent with the sinister and laced with the tragic and the bizarre -- this is an exceptional novel.