This novel follows Anna Morgan, a young woman from the West Indies who is stranded in England as a chorus girl on tour. Alone and short of money, she drifts into a relationship with an older man and learns how little protection she has. Memories of her Caribbean childhood, warm and colourful, run beside her cold, grey surroundings in England. Written in a plain, close first-person voice, it is a quiet and moving study of dependence, class, and the longing for home.
Quotes
I don't know how people live when they know exactly what's going to happen to them each day. (Part One, 7th section)
...There's fear, of course, with everybody. But now it had grown, it had grown gigantic; it filled me and it filled the whole world. (Part One, 9th section)
It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running. (Part two, 1st section)