People Who Say Goodbye

Before the First World War, when Wandsworth was still a countrified suburb, P.Y. Betts grew up there, observing with absolute clarity the behaviour and conversation of the adults around her. She did not always understand the implications of what she saw and heard but she remembered it and recreates it with startling immediacy. There were summer holidays at places that always seemed to begin with 'B, dark and smoggy winters when she was dosed with either brown medicine or red tonic, dreaded Chris