From her earliest years with a boozy, accident-prone father and a reluctantly pragmatic mother Janice Galloway grew up as a watcher - careful and vigilant. Then her parents' marriage broke up and mother and daughter moved to an attic above a doctor's surgery. When her big sister Cora returned home, with her steady stream of boyfriends, snappy dress sense and matching temper, evasion became a way of life.

This is a funny and telling book about the routine dependencies and confusions, hopes and triumphs of childhood; it is also a book about emergence, as slowly, the beginnings of unsuspected rage pushed the silent girl towards her voice.