Keeping Up Appearances

Book excerpt: Daisy and Daphne, half-sisters, are staying with a family of English 'intelligentsia' on holiday in the Mediterranean. Daisy - shy, insecure and working-class - conceals her 'shameful' work as an author of 'women's fiction' and a journalist with a popular newspaper. Daphne - attractive, confident and sophisticated - is approved of by all, and she and Raymond, the elder son, fall in love (as does Daisy with him). Back in London, the sisters resume normal life, Daisy visiting her 'common' but loving family and Daphne seeing Raymond, who proposes marriage, and is accepted - on condition the engagement is kept secret, to Raymond's consternation. As tension mounts, the author reveals that Daphne and Daisy are actually different facets of one person, and that Raymond, in accepting the sophisticated Daphne, will have to accept Daisy's lesser qualities as well. Daisy/Daphne feels she cannot afford to divulge her origins or let him and his cultured family meet her brash, 'common' mother, and agonises over this. But her determined mother decides to see her daughter's betrothed for herself, and the truth is out. Raymond rather likes mother, but his beloved's prevarications and duplicity have somewhat cooled his passion; will the engagement triumph, or, if not, who will end it?