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Catherine and Caroline, Toby and Mark were globetrotting siblings: British 'diplo-brats', whose childhood homes lay in Italy or Israel, France or Washington DC - wherever their father was posted at the time.

But all that was years ago. Now Catherine is approaching middle age, married to a life of cheeseparing selflessness looking after young offenders on a chilly organic farm; Mark is a prim supermarket executive, Caroline a wealthy Kensington wife, and Toby - well, Toby is a problem. The joker in the pack. He always was.

Amid growing tensions, marriage-fatigue and unspoken resentments, the apparent tragedy of Toby's mysterious disappearance jolts his sisters and brother into making angry anxious journeys: from California to Flanders, back in time and into their own hearts. The results are sometimes comic, unexpected, but oddly satisfying.

Libby Purves is a writer and also a broadcaster who has presented the talk programme Midweek on Radio 4 since 1984 and formerly presented Today. She is a main columnist on the Times and in 1999 was named the Granada "What the Papers Say" Columnist of the Year, and awarded a O.B.E for services to journalism. Her books on family life, How Not to Be a Perfect Mother, How Not to Raise a Perfect Child and How Not to Be a Perfect Family have been widely translated. Her compendium Nature's Masterpiece appeared in 1999 to complete the work. She also wrote One Summer's Grace, an account of a voyage around Britain in a small sailing boat with her husband and two small children in 1988. She lives in Suffolk with her husband the broadcaster and writer Paul Heiney.