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Miss Clementine Wetherby moved to Bombay with her parents in 1899. In the summer of 1939, when her mother and father are violently murdered by separatists connected to the Salt Rebellion, she returns to her childhood home in London accompanied by her closest friend, Miss Aadhirai Varma. However, the congenial, courteous and respectful Victorian world she remembers so thoroughly has vanished and the prolonged malefic shadow of the Second World War is about to arrive.

With the help of a number of local, free spirited retainers and domestic help, Clementine and Aadhirai navigate their way through an increasingly complex period with humour and determination and while there are new and hopeful relationships for some, other issues can only be resolved by estrangement, imprisonment or even death.

As Miss Wetherby’s personal triumphs and tragedies are played out against the larger canvas of the Second World War, taking each day one at a time she endures the hardness of rationing, personal pain, dramatic loss of close friends, and even the deaths of those whom she would called friends.

Nevertheless, as Christmases, birthdays and other war-related celebrations were acknowledged, everybody knew that life in England after the war would never be the same again.