Jude Hayland

It is 1966 and 12-year-old Mary Foster's narrow, prescribed world is abruptly disturbed by a sudden move from suburban London to a neglected Victorian house on the south coast of England.

A new friendship provides Mary with some comfort in an unfamiliar world of seagull squawks, endless horizons and strange new lodgers. But an unexpected discovery of deceit and deception profoundly affects her life and Mary is left to carry on, bitter and resentful, but silent on the matter.

Forty years later, Mary wants to know more. Another age, another era, another century; such secrecy and lies seem cowardly and irrelevant. Mary is anxious for the truth. Or at least she thinks she is - until the chance to uncover certain realities tests her resolve.

Miller Street SW22 follows a year in the lives of five neighbours who move into the street in the autumn of 2005, each brought to southwest London for a new start. Catherine Wells, recently widowed, Sam Gough and his invalid wife, Lydia, and Violet Lawrence find themselves drawn together by Frances Chater into preparations for a centenary street party. The indomitable organiser, she compels them onto a committee and thus they begin to forge cautious friendships.

As the months pass and the date of the street party grows closer, Catherine, Sam and Frances are unaware of what lies ahead. For the past, they are to discover, is not as fixed and immovable as they have assumed. Ultimately, what is uncovered in the summer of 2006 offers each of them a future unimagined and an entirely new understanding of the past.