One day they would all like her better than anyone else: even Roddy would tell her everything. Their lives, instead of being always remote and mysterious, would revolve intimately round her.


For Judith Earle, the memory of her childhood neighbours still holds an impossible glamour. An awkward only child, she was a little in love with each of the Fyfe cousins: coolly secretive Mariella, with her mermaid's eyes; faithful Martin; sharp-tongued, clever Julian; Charlie, beautiful as a prince - and, most of all, the strange, mercurial Roddy.


Then, when Judith is eighteen and about to take up a place at Cambridge, the cousins return to the house next door. Over the next few years, the longing, heartbreak and thrill of Judith's entanglement with the Fyfes will leave her forever changed.


Lehmann's daring and luminous first novel was published to sensational acclaim in 1927 as the voice of a new generation.


'Beautifully written and observed' TELEGRAPH


'No one has written more brilliantly about having one's heart broken, about despair and longing, humiliation and hope: all the wretched thrilling chaos that accompanies growing up' HARRIET LANE


'The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers' THE TIMES