Kay, at 44, has known marriage, motherhood, monogamy and, latterly, monotony. She's lived for 20 years and three months with a man who, at first, she thought magnificent. When she finds out about Brenda, her husband's lover, Kay decides to change her life.
Fiona Travers is in her thirties, single and under pressure to find a male. Imogen Banks is also unattached, successful, and delights in being bad. Claire Harper, 40 and coping alone decides to arrange a marriage for herself.
It is early 1956 and the British Empire is crumbling. But for nine-year-old Ella, living with her parents at the British High Commission in Peshawar, Pakistan, the walls of class, snobbery and racism are still intact. Growing up is a lonely, painful experience, and Ella withdraws, recording the hypocrisy of adult behaviour in her diary, A History of Insects, where she hides a secret that could shatter the lives of the people around her.
January 1967: stuck in a Welsh seaside town, seventeen-year-old Lily Tempest longs to break free. Her mother Melodys ambitions for her daughters are summed up in one word: marriage. But Lily would rather die first. Instead she goads her sisters into reaching for far more that they want for themselves with comic but also dark and dangerous results. As winter slides towards the summer of love however, Lily becomes increasingly aware that to leave will mean permanent exile.