Foreword by Phillipa Gregory: This is an odd novel of mine. It's partly a satire on the business of publishing which I was starting to understand by this time in my career, partly an ironic commentary on the mistakes a woman makes when she takes responsibility for everything, but it is mostly a wry musing on the nature of being a woman - whether in our world femininity is so constructed that a man could do it as well as a woman, and perhaps - more optimistically - that a real woman will find love if she dares. It was a novel which I wrote with great imaginative leaps and little planning - I remember my own shock when the shoes were stolen! It was not a scene I had planned at all, I didn't understand it then, I don't understand it now, but it has tremendous resonance for me - and of course, it gave me the last bizarre line.