“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge”. Gaugin’s epithet serves as the motto for this moral tale of two women, both in their 60s, whose lives are interwoven in ways neither of them yet understands. Madeleine Palmer is a retired curator, living alone on the Isle of Wight. One day Francis Beale comes to her door, a woman she has met only once, and who is now enjoying sudden success, late in life, as a popular novelist. The progress of a single night comes fascinatingly to echo the hidden course of their lives. This play was first seen in London in October 2002 starring Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench.