As a teenager, Harriet falls in love with Vesey and his elusive, teasing ways. When he goes to Oxford she cherishes his photograph and waits for the letter that never comes. Years pass, and with a husband and daughter, she excels at suburban respectability. But then Vesey reappears and her marriage seems to melt away. Harriet is older, it is much too late, but she still loves him.

'A Game of Hide and Seek showcases much of what makes Taylor a great novelist: piercing insight, a keen wit and a genuine sense of feeling for her characters' Elizabeth Day, Guardian

'A magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' David Baddiel, Independent

'Taylor has the genius of making her characters understood, sometimes with an almost frightening clarity, perhaps because she is compassionate as well as relentless in her delineation of them' The New York Times