Roche

Matilda Taylor-Tan was a 'cuckoo child'. With her made-up birthday and uncertain origins, she draws her professional persona around her like a swaddling blanket. But, at the age of 53, her world of oriental ceramics is shattered by the tightening coils of Thatcher's Britain and she begins to unravel under her own scrutiny. A letter from an unknown woman, Florence Tremain, takes her from the flat she shares with her Chef husband, John, in London, to Roche, in Cornwall, where she finds solace in its gritty landscape of slag, shale and scree and the brutal honesty of its people. She meets Tretta; a young woman who weaves Africa into the complex fabric of her life, helping Matilda to complete her quest: but the cost of completion is a weighty one.