Summary

Noel's sister, Ethel, is dying, and for the first time since childhood, he spends a week in her company. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, he discovers more about her past, her fight for women's rights in education, and in the process reassembles his own life.

Buried in this past is a secret infatuation for a man who reappears in Ethel's story, and that of her daughter, in a most unexpected way.