'Strange food is a perfect substitute for foreign travel. I started off with crabs and pomegranates and rice paper, progressed onto pancakes with maple syrup (from the Little Chef on the way to Bournemouth) and then tried experiments eating baby food and human blood. One day, my tooth came out during a mouthful of my mother's cottage pie. It was sort of chickeny. A chickeny, frightening flavour.'
A precocious thirteen-year-old growing up in an English seaside town during the 1970s, Rosa Barge longs for escape. The only glamour in her world comes from the life of her heroine, Fanny Cradock. Cradock's exotic concoctions of Crepe Suzette, Tournedos Rossini with mauve duchesse potatoes and the Taj Mahal made from Italian meringue speak to her of foreign climes and sophistication.
But when Rosa finally does escape, she finds that "abroad" is not quite what she expected. Bereft of the securities she knew in England, she finds the earthy, picaresque realities of Spain cause her to question who she really is and force her to deal with unpleasant truths about her past. A past which is gradually catching up with her . . .
