The last year of a lower class London family and friends living and working in Newgate Street before war engulfs them. There are funerals, affairs, deception, violence, and even a murder. And to those familiar with the Miriam series, there is a surprising visitor. A novel with domineering mothers, obsessions with famous trials and hangings and frustration that the little corporal from Germany was going to take over their lives. Yet amongst the anger and heartache of their everyday existence, many of their frustrations arrive from realising that they are subject to an unknowable future...