It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.

The family lived in the Bruntsfield area of Edinburgh. In 1947 Muriel Spark became editor of the Poetry Review. She returned to the United Kingdom in early 1944 taking residence at the Helena Club in London; years later the club would be her inspiration for the fictional May of Teck Club in The Girls of Slender Means.

Dame Muriel Spark DBE (1 February 1918 – 13 April 2006) was an award-winning Scottish novelist.