Nina Fforde believes her parents had the perfect marriage—until her elegant mother shows up at her father's funeral in gleeful red lipstick.

In the days following, Petra's behaviour only becomes more inappropriate. She smokes, she drinks, she laughs lustily during stolen phone calls. It's her life, the sixty-nine-year-old matron warns her daughters, and she's finally going to live it.

Nina's twin sister, Libby, puts Petra's transformation down to a form of 'bereavement mania,' induced by the freak accident that took Malcolm's life. But Nina's older sister, Clary, is more suspicious. She's seen evidence their parents' marriage wasn't as blissful as advertised.

Wanting both to protect her mother and do right by her father, Nina begins to investigate. What she finds will change everything she thought she knew about her parents, and throw her own quirky little life into chaos.