The Paying Guests

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' There came the splash of water & the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub After that there was a silence broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap ' Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms
- as something like two great waddling shillings But this she thought was what it really meant to have paying guests this odd unintimate proximity this rather peeled-back moment where the only thing between herself & a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen & a thin scullery door An image sprang into her head that round flesh crimsoning in the heat' It is 1922 & London is tense Ex-servicemen are disillusioned the out-of-work & the hungry are demanding change & in South London in a genteel Camberwell villa a large silent house now bereft of brothers husband & even servants life is about to be transformed as impoverished widow Mrs Wray & her spinster daughter Frances are obliged to take in lodgers For with the arrival of Lilian & Leonard Barber a modern young couple of the 'clerk class' the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways & as passions mount & frustration gathers no one can foresee just how far-reaching & how devastating the disturbances will be This is vintage Sarah Waters beautifully described with excruciating tension real tenderness believable characters & surprises It is above all a wonderful compelling story