"Gibson writes with a nervous versatility that is often very funny and never lacks a life of its own, speaking the language of our times as convincingly as aerosol graffiti"

- The Guardian

continued

As soon as her husband leaves the house Holly Walker goes upstairs and shuts herself in the bedroom. She draws the curtains against the cruelty of sunlight and waits for the sound of his car to retreat along Red Beech Grove and turn into Hawthorn Avenue as he makes his way towards the traffic queues for the city. She sits on the edge of the unmade bed, waiting for the silence to settle, and looks around the room. She scowls at the little dressing table beneath the window, the wickerwork chair with its Chinese cushion, the lamp on the twisted bamboo table, the sheepskin rug on the floor.

They came to this house three years ago, pulling up their roots to escape into the suburbs. The rambling apartment they had shared from a time before they were married was a draughty maze of rooms with elaborate mouldings on high, mottled ceilings and timber floors that cracked at night. The sash windows gazed into the corner of a stone courtyard where ferns grew in perpetual twilight. Their front door opened on to a massive oak staircase that led down to a marble entrance hall and the constant noise of the dirty streets.

The houses here in Meadow Bank are new. Neat brick and plasterboard boxes on cold concrete foundations. The furniture had been too large for these small, square rooms with their narrow doors and low ceilings. the Edwardian sideboard with the coper hinges had been abandoned along with the tall bookcase and the big, polished refectory table. It had been difficult to adjust to the diminished proportions of this new home.

CHAPTER ONE

1

THE PRISONER OF MEADOW BANK

 A modern fairy tale about sex, shopping and growing older.  When her husband commutes to work each morning, Holly Walker stays trapped in their suburban house in Meadow Bank. She’s overweight and bored and it’s time she took control of her life. But when she embarks on a crash-diet her whole world comes crashing around her ears. It’s the struggle between how people see us, and how we want to see ourselves.