Two young girls and their relationship with a much older doctor, a Frenchman with a showy young lover, a foul-mouthed colonel, a moody nurse, allusions to a lesbian affair, abortion, and drugs. In short; a novel by an author who couldn’t care less about conventions and who wanted to be in charge of her own life – and all this in 1931.

The characters encounter each other by coincidence, in a remote town on the Southern coast of England. The décor is a small hotel and a beach house, rocks and rain, green-grey water and a little strip of sand. A.H. Nijhoff observes and analyses the complex development of their relationships. She carefully sketches how throughout the years, they meet again, much more experienced and disillusioned, ready for new developments.