Celebrating 90 Years of Penguin Michael Joseph publishing with the Mermaid collection- Margaret Kennedy's Lucy Carmichael with a foreword by Lucy Mangan

'People seem to get over things, don't they? I don't know how, but they do - ordinary people. I'm very ordinary, so I expect I shall do what they do.'

Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiance anyway.

Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family's arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge.

There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues - and rediscovers her sensible young self. But if Lucy has, despite everything, kept her head - where lies her heart?