Cosy Walker's mum has had to go into hospital, possibly for a long time, and so Cosy must be fostered. Auntie and Guv are welcoming in their big, old, untidy house, but Cosy finds the other two fostered girls, Jade and Jemma, very difficult. They are cousins from a very different background to Cosy's. Loud and brash, super-confident and not too choosy about their language, they begin by bullying sad, unhappy Cosy. In the first place, she is a scholarship girl who goes to the local high school, so to Jade and Jemma she is a weedy swot. We discover that Cosy's mum has mental health problems, is agoraphobic, and is in hospital this time because she took too many of her tablets. Cosy and their neighbour have always done everything for mum, but she and mum have good times too and are very close. Cosy must learn to stand up for herself and she does this partially through a relationship with a girl from the past, someone who lived in the old house during World War II. Cosy sees her as a kind of ghost, but it develops that Kathleen can see Cosy too. Cosy learns to make friends with the bouncy Jade and Jemma, and in her own talents finds the self-esteem she needs. There has been a danger, one feels, that Cosy could end up with the same sort of problems as her mum, but the resolution of the story makes this unlikely. A good read from a master story teller.