Joey is a fantasist struggling to “grow up” in the wake of her mother’s death and her recent marriage. It is through this character that the novel most explores the theme of Fantasies of Adulthood.

After the post-murder prologue, the novel begins with Joey’s return to her hometown of Bristol with her new husband Alfie Butter, a development she sees as the “start of the big new grown-up [Joey]” (69). She’s spent the last handful of years working at an Ibizan resort, a vacation spot with a reputation for hedonism and wild parties, where she met Alfie. However, practical considerations quickly interfere with her vision of a new, more mature chapter in her life. She and Alfie move in with her older brother and his wife and Joey to take a dead-end job at a soft-play center for young children.

Joey fixates on Tom Fitzwilliam, the charismatic head of the local school, an authority figure that her brother identifies as being particularly attractive to “vulnerable” people looking for someone to save them from themselves. She cheats on her husband with him but comes to an epiphany before consummating the affair. She realizes that neither she nor her fantasy is singular.