The events in this story take place one Friday in March and concern the residents of four houses in Moreland Road in Bath. Their lives change when a mail van catches fire and four letters are destroyed.
One of the people is a seventeen-year-old schoolboy called Jason, who lives with his mother. His father left twelve years before. Jason loves a girl called Maria whom he has grown up with. On this particular Friday night, he goes round to her house and finds out that she is in love with a French boy she met earlier. She is going to study in Paris the following autumn. Jason is devastated by the news and spends the night wandering around on his own. Eventually he shelters from the rain in a mail van, where he falls asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand. After he gets out of the van, it catches fire. In the burnt mail sack is the letter from art college offering Jason a place for the following September. The letter asks him to reply immediately if he wants to accept the place. He never finds this out. He spends the next year doing odd jobs until he can take up his place. In the meantime, he gets to know his father, who has come back into their life.
Another character is Nina Sen, a successful bank manager with a seven-year-old son, Max. She has
the opportunity to manage a larger branch of the
bank in Newcastle and discusses it with her husband, David. He is a cook at a successful French restaurant (Julie’s). He is prepared to move because of Nina’s job, and also because he doesn’t own Julie’s, which is what he would like. However, his parents have sent him a letter telling him that they have bought him the restaurant as a birthday present. This letter is burnt in the mail van fire, too. In the end Nina takes the job in Newcastle and travels up and down from Bath each week for eighteen months. Meanwhile, David runs the restaurant, and David’s niece looks after Max. After eighteen months, Nina gets a managership at nearby Bristol and so is able to move back.