A gripping portrayal of female transgression and the intoxicating spell that adolescent friendship can cast.

A young girl returns from boarding school to her sleepy Merseyside hometown and waits to be reunited with her childhood friend, Harriet, the chief architect of all their past mischief. Listlessly roaming the shoreline each evening, she repeatedly encounters 'the Tsar', Peter Biggs. Middle-aged, unhappily married and often unsober, he is repulsive. And yet, somehow, dangerously fascinating . . .

When Harriet finally arrives, over the course of the holidays she draws her friend into a scheme to beguile and then humiliate the Tsar, leading to a disastrous and shocking end. Beryl Bainbridge's classic first novel remains as subversive today as when it was written.