At a private clinic in North London, the paths of two women briefly cross: Dr Madeleine Kingston, a young academic whose husband has recently left her for a French au pair; and Gina Kaufman, the beautiful, leisured wife of a film producer. Infertility is about the only thing they have in common - that and their desperation to have children.

Fate, or luck, dictates that Madeleine is the one to become pregnant. She names her daughter Ella and brings her up alone, juggling work, childminders and domestic chores, running the gamut of maternal emotions from joy to anguish. Gina and her husband George are less fortunate. After five failed attempts at in vitro fertilisation, they give up, and Gina diverts her longing into an orgy of shopping and champagne. Until one day at the hairdresser's, she spots the newspaper headline 'Fertility Clinic in Egg Swap Scandal'. The clinic is the one she and Madeleine attended: her egg could have been implanted in another woman; she could, after all, be a mother. And if she's right, she wants her child back.

The paradoxes of motherhood have not been so well written about since Margaret Drabble's THE MILLSTONE - The Times

A topical novel about love, sex, and mothering that is funny, acute and poignant all at the same time. Rachel Morris takes on some big issues with a cool, stylish pen and an unflinching honesty. An intelligent, charming and challenging book - Sarah Dunant

Brilliantly conveys fierce mother love, the hassles of parenthood and the agony of the infertile - Woman's Journal

A brave book, which dares to probe the illicit areas of our femininity - Bernice Reubens

Rachel Morris's first novel, THE FRINGE ORPHAN, was published in 1992. She lives with her husband and children in North London.