The story begins with Alice getting her daughters ready for school. In the first couple of chapters we begin to get a look into Alice's life: widowed after her first daughter was born, married to her business partner, and struggling to make sense of the world. By the third chapter we being to see some cracks in her life, a bullied daughter, an old boy friend more interested in her body than her business talents and the veiled intimation that her husband might be in physical danger. Lots of story lines to delve into ...