Literary Afternoon Tea: Dinah Jefferies

Debut novelist Dinah Jefferies will be introducing her latest novel ‘The Separation’ and will consider with her afternoon tea audience, what happens when a mother and her daughters are parted - who do they become when they believe it might be forever?

Malaya 1955. Eleven-year-old Emma Cartwright can’t understand why the family is leaving the country without her mother, Lydia, or why her father is refusing to answer her questions.

Returning from a visit to a sick friend, Lydia, arrives home to an empty house ? there’s no sign of her husband Alec, her daughters, or even the servants. The telephone line is dead. Acting on information from Alec’s boss, Lydia embarks on a dangerous journey across civil-war-torn Malaya to find her family.

In England, Emma’s determined to keep the memory of her beloved mother alive and, refusing to believe Lydia would ever have abandoned them, she quests for answers.