Maud is an old woman with dementia who fears her best friend Elizabeth is missing. Maud is also fixated on discovering what happened to her sister, Sukey, after Sukey went missing 70 years ago. Maud once worked as a switchboard operator and has two adult children, Helen and Tom, as well as three grandchildren.

Maud refuses to succumb to old age. She is determined to solve the twin mystery of what happened to her sister and to her best friend before her memory fails her completely.

Maud is a different kind of unreliable narrator, not one who is deliberately hiding information from the reader, but one who is often unable to discern truth and reality due to dementia.

Helen is in her 50s, has a teenage daughter named Katy, and works as a gardener. Taking care of her mother, Maud, overwhelms her, and she’s constantly adjusting as Maud’s condition worsens.

Helen returns the items her mother takes from the grocer’s without paying, cleans up the cold tea cups that her mother forgets to drink, vacuums Maud’s house, takes her out shopping, picks her up to the police station, takes her out for meals, takes her to the doctor’s, and takes her to visit her father’s grave.