- Window display - Laura, 26, in therapy, is eating with her little daughter in public. At the next table is a boring man with a younger woman who seems to be faking her enjoyment. Laura was with Tom, 47. She didn't enjoy the sex as much as he did. To her, women over 30 were old. He saw Tom with a bunch of people his age in a pub. That night at his place (which now looked old rather than interesting) she had decided to leave him - "Tom's comfort was moreish but it had started to sicken her; she had gorged on his feast of convenience but it had only led to more agitation". As the couple leave "Laura wanted to tell this woman that she didn't have to apologise when she knew she was right, that she didn't have to wear painful shoes to work to be taken seriously and that being good didn't mean staying quiet"
- Three sisters - Katie (her PoV - ex-squatter, now respectable wife of Justin, mother of 4 children, older sister of the bride Joanna who's marrying aristocratic Phil), aware of her flab, is attending the wedding surrounded by brokers and bankers. Joanna tried not to invite family members she dislikes. Katie had helped Joanna when Joanna was in her early twenties until Joanna asked for even more money. Phil's female friends (Katie's friends now) are rich and false. Bex, her youngest sister, is plump. The 3 sisters have different fathers and don't see much of each other. Bex's father, a nice, self-made business man, helped the family recover, though the mother remains fatalistic. Bex (20 years younger than Katie) is a rebel - anti-marriage, anti-wealth. Katie opens up to her about the sadness of her life, the strategies she uses to get through each day. Then we're told about Joanna's residential rehab. Joanna interrupts her sisters' chat, complaining about their behaviour.
- Bar Italia - a wife, 45, at an academic conference has sex in bar Italia toilets with a man she's just met there. She then takes him back to her hotel though she's already bored. She's experienced at managing affairs. She makes him go. He tries to return but she's not interested. The only affair she cared about was with a woman, Rhea.
- Junction 64 - Deborah deferred going to Uni to help her mother who has cancer. She worked at the counter of Burger King until was sent to the kitchen after she cut her hair and stopped using make-up. She fancies Cheryl, a colleague. She sees her screwing her boyfriend in a car in the car park. She doesn't want to be middle class, where neighbours argue about unkempt front gardens - "This would lead to an altercation on the driveway or via a community Facebook thread until one of the parties moved away or everyone once again adhered to the unwritten rules and order was restored" (a passage of internal monologue that doesn't sound like Deborah). She doesn't get on with colleague Jonny. Boss Barry sees management potential in her. Jonny suddenly lashes out against her. "I cried for all the times I had tried to play along in the performance but didn't know my part. I cried for all the times I wanted to be more of myself but didn't dare admit what that might look like". Her friend tells her that she can choose what to take with her into tomorrow. She doesn't want a standard marriage and house. She looks at the distant wind turbines and the motorway.
- Lego - Lecturer Kevin, divorced with grown kids, contacts Mistress Bee online - £300 per call, after a day of Zooming students. The safe word is "Lego". He comes to enjoy the abuse. She sends him rotting food and butt-ends which he has to eat while she watches. The last section is from the dominatrix's PoV. He wants to break through beyond the role-play, a phase she always finds interesting.
- Paper dolls - Carmen's helping her mother move house rather than holidaying in Portugal with friends. Carmen moved out a dozen years before. The narrative oscillates between Carmen's mother driving her home, and memories of Leanne, Carmen's very best friend at school, who died in a car-crash with her boyfriend after Carmen left a dance early. Sounds like Carmen's unmarried.
- Next Gen - Jameela works in advertising. Central London. She's doing well. Her mentor of 3 years is Carrie - who's frozen her eggs knowing that she can't be a boss and a mother. Andy is their out-of-date boss. Carrie tells Jameela not to be distracted by the sexism etc - she should play the long game. But Jameela learns that Carrie is manipulating her. She lets Carrie know.
- Look at me mummy - while watching her little daughter dance ("At five and six they haven't internalised the limits put on them by others, or registered their body as a battleground") a mother recalls how she as a child was made self-aware of fatness by her step-father. She recalls how her late father took her to sports - reluctantly it transpired.
- The Cat - "My friends and family went through personal dramas and I looked on like their lives were episodes of EastEnders playing on the TV in the background of a Chinese takeaway". A woman tries hard to be a success on a dating site. An affair with Robert grows and fades. She has orgasms that she feels detached from. He becomes slow at replying to messages. She doesn't know what she did wrong. Meanwhile a cat visits her garden. She regularly feeds it though it sometimes bites her. The woman feels special that the cat chose her. It catches a mouse, toys with it before it dies. The cat lets itself be cuddled for the first time. It stays the night. She ignores Robert's call and deletes him.
- Women of Pret - Camila has a son Archie. She used to run big TV/film productions but since becoming a mother her job has become precarious. Yara (her 3rd person PoV), Sally (just divorced) and Megan (once a head of finance; now a declutterer) are other mothers at an under 3s messy play session - "The children acted on pure instinct. They hadn't yet been conditioned to suppress their self-serving urges into socially acceptable behaviour". "Yara discovered that finding support at these groups was a tricky balance of working out who could offer real advice without judgement, whilst opening herself up to the anxious projections of equally vulnerable women ... Amongst the round-robin exercises of one-up-womanship were rare moments of genuine care between relative strangers". Yara doesn't much like the other mums but sometimes she needs their help. Her neighbourhood's been gentrified, the few remaining BAMErs token.
- Single serve - Diane's been working for 25 years in a cinema. It's the Tuesday morning showing for OAPs - mostly women, "freed from the constraints of being nice. They were role models for Diane". She's 49. She has routines and habits. A balding, married, male colleague gives her a thoughtful birthday present. She suggests that they have a drink together at the end of the shift
- Self portrait - Maria, a 75 year old artist, born in Lithuania now living in New York, is finishing a self-portrait for her show - 45 years of work. She lives with Bernie (female) who she left her husband and kids for, and who she painted 40 years ago. A month after Maria's funeral a package arrives at Bernie's - the 2 paintings.
The women are under pressure from careers, motherhood, and thoughtless men. The narrator expresses (using the same voice in different stories) when the characters or action can't. In some of the stories it seems to me that once the situations are set up, not a lot happens. Some good observation - I believed all the settings. I wasn't so convinced by some of the characters.
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