Sheer abandon. Penny Vincenzi. 2005.

One night in 1986 an abandoned baby girl is found in a cleaning cupboard at Heathrow airport. A year earlier, three girls, Martha, CIO and Jocasta, had met by chance, at the start of a backpacking adventure. They travelled together briefly and then separated to go their different ways, swearing to meet again when they return home.

But it would be a long time before they met again: not until Kate, the found

ing, is a teenager, and the three women are all leading successful lives. Martha is a fiercely single, highly paid corporate lawyer, Clio a doctor, locked in an unhappy marriage to a surgeon, and Jocasta a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, in love with a charming commitment-phone.

Which of them is Kate’s mother? Why was she desperate enough to do such a thing, and how did she survive it?