Whenever a wealthy customer visits Mathilde’s dressmaking store, she finds herself attracted into the only surviving circle of luxury still left in a barren London. Attending parties offers a welcome escape from lifestyle governed by ration credit cards and a purely enforced child plan. Here she matches enigmatic government minister, George, and piano-playing Jaminder, with whom an intense friendship blossoms. As their relationship grows more powerful, George’s grip on Mathilde tightens, as she tries to discover where the illicit meals is via, where women vanish to, and what price she must pay out to avoid getting a child right into a cruel, ever-changing world.

Winner of the Not the Booker Prize 2018