The novel’s setting mirrors the protagonist’s character evolutions. The novel opens in the narrative present. Grace is stuck in her car on the hottest day of the year in gridlock traffic. The geographical, seasonal, and circumstantial facets of this opening scene foreshadow the conflicts to come. The London backdrop also ignites Grace’s distress throughout her day. She is in a busy, unpredictable place that challenges her self-control.

As Grace makes her way through North London to retrieve her daughter’s cake, her surroundings shift. The longer that Grace wanders the streets, the more her mind wanders into the past. Grace’s physical movements through London are therefore a metaphor for her internal journey. Indeed, the conflicts she encounters in her surroundings both mirror and trigger her emotions. In Chapter 1, Grace feels that “she’s been set on fire from the inside out” (1). Her external circumstances convey her internal unrest. In later chapters, Grace’s encounters with the little boy, the bakery clerk, the elderly woman at the corner store, the man on the golf course, the man on the train, the angry driver, and the kind man at the park charge Grace’s ever-shifting setting.