Set during the interwar period of the twentieth century in England. Olivia Curtis wakes to her seventeenth birthday ; her presents: a roll of flame-coloured silk for her first evening dress ; a diary for her inmost thoughts ; a china ornament ; a ten shilling note. Safe, still, within the bosom of a family at once lovingly familiar yet curiously remote, she stands poised on the brink of womanhood ; anticipating her first dance with tremulous uncertainty and excitement -- the greatest, yet most terrifying event in her restricted social life. For her pretty, poised elder sister Kate, the dance will be a triumph, but for Olivia, shy and awkward, what will it be?

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