An elderly woman, once an intrepid journalist, is paralysed with apprehension at the thought of meeting the daughter of her dearest friend. A budding writer is taken on a amanuensis by a famous woman novelist, with disastrous results. A would-be biographer visits a home fro retired clowns. . . With her miraculously sharp eye for the telling detail, her nose for the secrets smouldering behind the most staid suburban facades, Shena Mackays's stories combine the macabre and mundane to brillant effect.