Alice’s mother Nannette (Nan) is 91 when she stages a sit-down protest in a hospital corridor. She refuses to move until she is allowed to go home. Home is a small bungalow in Suffolk, where she plants runner beans in her little garden and listens to Pavarotti on the CD player. But life in the present doesn’t hold much interest anymore for Nan – until, that is, her late husband Bill returns. As they share old memories, relive old disagreements and settle their differences, he guides her through her last months in this world. The novel winds back to Nan as a young woman living through the Blitz in London, meeting Bill and starting a life together after the war. They move from place to place, searching for somewhere to call home, striving to build a better future for their children. Meanwhile, in the present, Nan struggles to hold onto her independence and dignity in old age. The character of Nan is based on the author’s late mother.