Nobody at The Eyrie is quite like Red Dora—in her eighties, she's a Scots ex-Communist, ex-Trotskyite who fought in the Spanish Civil War. With her fiery brand of radical anticapitalism, she conjures plans of political sabotage and computer hacking. She rails at a society that seems to have forgotten its political roots and a government that doesn't care. But beneath her rage lies a more intimate disappointment, a tragic death she has yet to come to terms with. Eirlys is a madly patriotic Welsh woman with a brass dragon on her door. She is the "mother" of the The Eyrie's little clan—always providing tea and sympathy. Little do the other residents suspect that Eirlys was once in prison. When Hannah comes to The Eyrie to escape years of boredom in a dreary middle-class marriage to a man she never loved, she revels in her newfound freedom, finding that life at The Eyrie offers surprising new opportunities and an unlikely co-conspirator in Red Dora.