An audio book.
In 2015 Alice (divorced) meets a man, Angus, at her mother's funeral who says he's her (and her sister's) biological father, and that her mother changed her name. She wasn't always an easy person to be with, but Alice is shocked. She assumed Ralph was her father.
We go back to 1950. Janet, 10, is the result of an affair her drink-loving mother had. She's poor, clever, and wants to be an actress.
We return to the main timeline where Alice is discovering her mother's past. This is interrupted by further scenes from her mother's life - a victim of parental violence; care homes, etc.
She doesn't share the news with Emily her sister or Ralph, her adoptive father. How much does he know? Why hadn't he now revealed to his daughters what the truth was? A friend (retired policeman) does some checking online for her, discovering that Angus was indeed a bigamist and had gone to jail, and that her mother had changed her name several times. She had been an actress. Alice doesn't seem destabilised by this. She'd wondered why she hadn't been told about her mother's past, but had never been especially curious. She tracks down a woman who was in the same play as her mother, and chats to her. She finds out that her mother ran a brothel, etc. The facts (or at least the reasons for the lies) gradually emerge. The only good favour her mother did for someone backfires, Ralph knew little of his wife's previous life. While following up leads, Alice meets a man she likes enough to marry. Meanwhile, her sister's growing bored of her husband.
We're sometimes told an episode twice, from different PoVs, but the viewpoints aren't different enough. Alice never wrongly deduces. The ages of the characters are chosen to make the plot work, but make some of the characters unlikely. And could Angus really (financially) keep one of his marriages secret?
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