‘When my mother washed my hair she crooned, mamele, mamele, into my ear. Little mother, meaning little daughter, meaning you’re a good girl, Edie.’ Edie lives in a crumbling country house in Broadstairs with her partner Joanna. They have spent over a decade together since the death of Harry, the third member of their polyamorous marriage. It’s a quiet, comfortable existence – but conversations about the mother who abandoned her have recently awoken in Edie feelings she long thought buried. As Edie’s memories unspool – childhood days among the gossiping housewives of the mansion block, intense adolescent love affairs, clandestine nights in London clubs – she is forced to confront her ghosts and piece together the various parts of herself, as a queer woman and the daughter of a Jewish émigré. Now in her early fifties, she wonders whether there is still time to become the woman she once yearned to be.