After six years of marriage and work in a small travel agency, Tim relies heavily on his active fantasy life.  A new couple arrives on the modern estate where he lives with his wife and son.  This is Swedish Helga and her rugger-playing husband Alex.  Helga of course feeds Tim's fantasies, as she does the active imaginations of other male householders in The Grove.  A holiday in Greece is dreamt up and four couples head off to share a villa on an Aegean island. The machinations of each member of the party provide a variety of comic situations while the writer explores with perception the different approaches to marriage and extra-marital relationships, and the differing needs of each of the eight characters.  The result is an astute, original and amusing book.

‘A delightful comedy of manners, astringent enough not to be coy and thoughtful enough not to be frivolous,’ Francis King, Sunday Telegraph