England in 1963. Alice is at boarding school in Sussex, Sylvia is drinking in her bedroom and Quentin is hatching plots to extend his poultry empire to Italy in cahoots with the Vatican. It is a year of family transitions and a summer trip to Rome ... but will the chickens come home to roost? An endearing novel set in the 1960s based on a true story, with headstrong female characters, a Vatican scandal and the poultry industry! Author's note: This is a fictionalised account of a true story, that happened to me as a schoolgirl in the 1960s. I lived the experience, with the truth being stranger than fiction. This novel is made up of true and embroidered bits mixed with complete fabrications, things half-remembered and mis/overheard; fragments from a year in my life sixty years ago. The originals of any characters taken from life are long gone now and my own children know better than to believe most of it!