2008 - and Hilary is writing her diary in an attempt to stay sane!

Worried to distraction by four generations of her own family, she is the filling in a sandwich, and she is feeling the pressure. Her jobless 26 year old son, Brendan, who has never left home, spends increasing amounts of time engaged in mysterious transactions online; her daughter Sarah is being controlled by a divorced man twice her age; and her elderly mother, Gwendoline, is on a one-woman crusade to become a martyr to a lost cause.

Hillary's husband Martin, a pharmacist, isn't helping. Martin is pushing 50 and entering a mid-life crisis brought on by a failing business and a sense of hopelessness.

As Hillary's life starts to unravel events reach a head when she begins to suspect, to her horror, that Martin may be having an affair.

Through 2008 and 2009, as she records her anxieties in her diary against a background of financial upheaval and the credit crunch, can she hold on?