Helen lovingly prepares her spare room for her friend Nicola. She is
coming to visit for three weeks, to receive treatment she believes will
cure her cancer. From the moment Nicola staggers off the plane, gaunt
and hoarse but still somehow grand, Helen becomes her nurse, her
guardian angel and her stony judge. The two women - one sceptical, one
stubbornly serene - negotiate an unmapped path through Nicola's bizarre
therapy, stumbling towards the novel's terrible and transcendent finale.