Clara has broken away from the stifling respectability of her northern home to live her own life in London. Through her close friendship with Celia Denham she enters a world of dazzling educated people and wealthy bohemians. Clara yearns to be part of their constellation.

          "She wondered what her mother would have made of Amelia, Magnus, Gabriel, Clelia and Annunciata, let alone Sebastian and Candida." Clara’s mother would have made very little of them, but the girl from Northam was very much at home in their "tender, blurred world". After all, it was so much more "real" than the world of the folks back home. Clara could become the golden girl and have real affairs with married men, just like in the novels.