SPOILERS!!!
The book follows the lives of these three women with her problems and love stories, and their friendship.
After her husband died in the crash, Bea has to start from scratch, and she begins work at a school. There she meets a fellow teacher, Francis, who is kind and agreeable. The man is divorced and tells Bea that his wife was a control freak. Bea falls in love with Francis, and they marry. Francis is good with the girls, but he doesn't want to have children of his own. Then two years later Bea discovers that he is having an affair, and Francis admits to it, but he says that it didn't mean anything. Bea once ran into his first wife, and she told him that Francis gets bored after two or three years with the same woman, and he also cheated on her too. Things go back to normal, but in the end Bea divorces him when he gets his lover pregnant.
The surprise for Bea comes when suddenly a man comes asking for her when she is away, looking after her mother who is recovering from breast cancer. It is Emma who is in the house, watering the plants, and she realises that this man is Ciaran. When Bea returns, she has a note from Emma, and she calls Ciaran and they meet. Bea learns that Ciaran did not know anything about the baby she had, and he was made to believe that she didn't want to see him again. This is a plot that both their fathers concocted. After this first meeting, Bea and Ciaran see each other regularly, but Bea thinks that love is gone. Yet, as she gets to know him again, she falls for him, and in the end they marry. And then their son contacts them and they finally meet.
Marissa has always refused to have a relationship with a man, but when she meets Gabriel, a Frenchman, who is divorced and has a teeange daughter. Marissa falls for him hard. Then Jamie reappears, trying to blackmail her, so she has no option but tell Gabriel. He doesn't react well as he thinks that she has been lying to her and he leaves her. Marissa is devastated, and even when his daughter comes to her because her mother had let her down by not turning up, he doesn't seem to melt. It is Bea who decides to go and see him in France. She tells him how much Marissa loves him, and he goes to find her and they finally get together.
Emma seems overwhelmed by family life and her husband doesn't seem to help her, especially with their youngest who is very disruptive. He eventually realises that she needs him, and Emma starts painting and indulging in art.
Her mother, Tamar, has an affair with the man who she met during the war years ago and whose grandmother was the owner of the hairpin. They meet in London from time to time, but when Alexander tells him that he has been offered a job in New York and he is willing to leave everything for him, she tells him that he can't leave Rob because she loves him and there is too much they have shared. So Alexander leaves.
Rob dies, and even though Alexander writes to her, she doesn't reply. And then Alexander turns up at Seastone, and their relatioship starts again.
The last book is the funeral for Tamar where the three friends get together to bid goodbye to the woman that had meant so much to them.
I found the characters engaging, but I think this is not the best book of this author I have read.
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