This is the long-awaited new novel from a much-loved author. It began as a day like any other...When Eleanor sets off for lunch in a seaside pub one glorious September day, she has no idea that her world is about to be turned upside down. Divorced, and newly retired from a glamorous career in London, she is enjoying the gentler pace of life in the country, and starting to make friends. A near-fatal car crash changes everything. Confined to hospital for several weeks, the fiercely-independent Eleanor must come to rely on others. Her daughter Alex, starting out on her own career and caught up in a tempestuous relationship, returns home to care for her mother. Under the most difficult of circumstances, the two women - never close - are forced to re-assess what they mean to each other, and to those around them...