Fine is never more enjoyable than when depicting strong, flawed characters, and Tilly is one of her best. Her novels are powered by fury, the kind of hilarious, raging honesty inspired when people get too close to the stuff of each other's lives and can't disentangle themselves. It is a peculiarly English rage, which all too many polite, intelligent people in this overcrowded country feel but don't express, and although Fine's conversational style seems so direct as to be almost crude, it bristles with wit and a surprising degree of sensitivity. All her work, both for adults and children, is concerned with how evil and danger seep into what should be a loving family or community, and how it may be cast out again. Sometimes, as in Mrs Doubtfire, the result is anguished comedy and sometimes, as in the magnificent Tulip Touch, about a friendship between two girls which deteriorates into real wickedness, it takes a gothic turn. Her protagonists tend to be friendless, locked in a single all-important relationship they lack the strength to free themselves from.

Tilly's pragmatism masks a cruel and selfish character but she is the backbone of Anne Fine's wonderful novel. Geoff is unforgivably wet.

And yet there is something terrifyingly recognisable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls.