Claudia Hampton lies dying in hospital and tells a nurse she is writing a history of the world.

Young Claudia falls from a cliff while fossil hunting with Gordon and accuses him of pushing her.

Claudia tells Jasper at a museum that she is pregnant and that they will not marry.

Gordon and Claudia celebrate his Oxford fellowship; Sylvia observes the intense, exclusionary bond between the siblings.

Sylvia visits Claudia in the hospital; Claudia pretends to be asleep to avoid the encounter.

Claudia takes young Lisa for a walk in the woods, leaving both mother and daughter feeling frustrated and disconnected.

Claudia prays for Tom after weeks of silence from the front lines of the desert war.

Claudia reflects on arriving in Egypt as a war correspondent and calls her time with Tom the core of her life.

Claudia and Tom spend a weekend in Luxor; the Moon Tiger incense burns as they declare their love.

Tom Southern rescues Claudia and other journalists stranded by a desert sandstorm; she notices his capable hand on the wheel.

Tom buys Claudia a locket ring in a Cairo market and they fill its secret compartment with desert sand.

Claudia loses her pregnancy at an Egyptian nursing home after learning that Tom has been killed in action.

Gordon meets Claudia at Victoria station when she returns from Egypt after the end of the war.

Claudia and Gordon begin an incestuous love affair one summer while learning to dance the foxtrot together.

Claudia dies in her hospital room; the evening news turns on in the now-empty room.

Claudia Hampton spends her final days in hospital dying of cancer, mentally composing a history of her own life. The pool traces her key relationships — her competitive childhood bond with Gordon, her unconventional partnership with Jasper, and her doomed wartime love affair with Tom Southern in Egypt. It follows Claudia's journey as a war correspondent to Cairo and the Luxor weekend where she and Tom declare their love. Tom's death in battle and Claudia's subsequent pregnancy loss mark the emotional climax of her story. After the war, Claudia returns to England and enters an incestuous affair with Gordon that shapes both of them for life. The pool closes with Claudia's quiet death in her hospital room, the evening news filling the silence she leaves behind.

The headline events of Claudia's life and death.

The narrative shifts to Claudia's mother's perspective, revealing her bafflement at her two fiercely competitive children.

Young Claudia admires her striking red hair and green eyes in the mirror, recognizing her own prettiness.

Thirteen-year-old Claudia challenges her history teacher with provocative questions about the motivations of historical figures.

Gordon teases a younger Claudia for not understanding the mechanics of sexual intercourse.

A visit to a Plymouth living history village is described separately from Sylvia's, Claudia's, and Gordon's perspectives.

Claudia panics in the hospital when she cannot remember the word curtain, fearing what losing language means.

Claudia and Jasper attend Lisa's wedding looking glamorously rumpled and inappropriately dressed, inadvertently overshadowing the bride.

Young Lisa throws a tantrum after Claudia refuses to let her wear the hot pink nail polish.

Lisa visits the hospital and keeps conversation deliberately impersonal while concealing her secret love affair from Claudia.

Claudia's Cairo roommate Camilla notices Claudia is looking ill as Rommel's forces advance and Tom goes silent.

Tom tells Claudia he loves her and reveals he wants to marry her and have a child after the war.

Tom is reported missing from the front lines and then confirmed killed in action, leaving Claudia distraught.

Claudia visits a displaced persons camp near the German-Polish border while reporting for a newspaper after the war.

A Normandy conference engineered by Jasper leads to Claudia meeting a newspaper mogul who advances her career.

Laszlo visits Claudia in the hospital and she asks him to retrieve a mysterious brown envelope from her home.

This pool explores the supporting events and secondary perspectives that give texture to Claudia's life story. From childhood — her mother's exasperated view of the siblings, Claudia's early vanity, and her sharp questions in history class — the pool moves through her strained relationship with Lisa and her decades-long entanglement with Jasper. It covers the unbearable tension of waiting for news from Tom during the war's most dangerous phase, and Tom's devastating confirmation of death. After the war, Claudia channels her grief into journalism, building a celebrated career through connections made at a Normandy conference. The pool ends near Claudia's deathbed, where Laszlo's hospital visit sets in motion her final wish to re-read Tom's diary one last time.

The secondary moments that shaped Claudia's world.

Claudia decides she wants to write a kaleidoscopic rather than linear history, establishing the novel's non-chronological structure.

Claudia and Gordon compete intensely for the attention of their shared tutor as both begin awakening to sexuality.

Claudia recalls visiting the island of Lindisfarne with Gordon in the period just before the outbreak of war.

Lisa watches Claudia sleep in the hospital and privately wonders whether she truly loves her own mother.

Claudia and Jasper argue over ancestry versus self-determination; she declares she will one day write a pretentious history of the world.

Tom gives Claudia a fossil starfish he found in the Egyptian desert and mentions that he keeps a diary.

Claudia steps away from the journalists' truck in the desert and discovers a wounded soldier beside a wrecked vehicle.

Tom tells Claudia what it truly feels like to be a soldier, arguing that historians gloss over war's brutality.

Young Lisa discovers Claudia's locket ring and Claudia reacts with fierce anger when Lisa threatens to clean out the sand.

Claudia feels jealous upon learning that Gordon had an American girlfriend while serving in India during the war.

A family dinner allows Sylvia to perceive the unnervingly intimate nature of Claudia and Gordon's sibling bond.

Jasper visits Claudia in the hospital; she tries to start a debate but he refuses to argue with her.

Claudia survives a car accident in Spain after dining with an actor on a film consulting job about Cortez.

Gordon and Claudia share a final political debate two days before his death; Claudia silently tells him she loves him.

Tom's diary reveals his thoughts of Claudia and his hopes for their future; his sister's note records his death in battle.

This pool traces the turning points at which Claudia's identity, relationships, and self-understanding shifted most dramatically. It begins with her foundational decision to write a non-linear history and moves through the charged early awakening of her rivalry and attraction toward Gordon. Key revelations unfold in Egypt — Tom's gift of a fossil and his mention of a diary, Claudia's encounter with a wounded soldier, and their frank conversation about the human cost of war. Domestic revelations follow: Lisa's private doubts about loving her mother, the discovery of the locket ring, and Sylvia's intuition about the siblings' unnervingly close bond. The pool culminates in Gordon and Claudia's final argument before his death, and in Tom's diary, which at last grants the reader direct access to the man Claudia loved and lost.