The early life and family history of Nancy Parker is pure invention, as is the account of her married life in New York. The friendship of Nancy and Chance with the Taylors loosely reflects the actual relationship between Katharine and Schuyler Jackson and Tom Matthews and his wife, Julie. I have made use of their short involvement with Gurdjieff and his followers. The location of Riding and Graves's home in Mallorca has been shifted to Provence and I have omitted their subsequent experiences in England, Switzerland and Brittany in 1936-1938. The scene of the coming together of the three couples has been shifted from Pennyslvania to New England. No resemblance is intended to the children of the Matthews or of the Jacksons.

Mrs Jackson was committed for a period, during which her husband married Laura Riding. Graves returned to England in the summer of 1939 and, after a nervous breakdown, began a new life with Beryl Hodge, who subsequently became his second wife.

The disabling accident and death of Nancy Parker's son are fictitious events. Mrs Jackson's 'crime' was to have been found attempting to strangle one of her daughters.

Schuyler and Laura (Riding) Jackson became fruit farmers in Florida, where they continued to work on their dictionary. Katharine Jackson was released after treatment. She converted to Catholicism and remained friendly with Tom Matthews who retired as editor of Time magazine to live in England.

Robert Graves returned to Mallorca, where he died in 1985. Laura Riding remained in Florida after her husband's death in 1968. She continued to work for a new and truthful definition of words until her death in 1991. Katharine Jackson survived her and showed a kind and extraordinarily unembittered interest in the work of biographers seeking her version of the extraordinary events by which her life was so disquietingly shaken and almost destroyed in the summer of 1939.