Anne Fine's 'Raking the Ashes' Quiz

Answer: Harry's wedding

The book starts 'in medias res', rather than right at the beginning of the plot. Geoff's son Harry is due to get married to Tara, his bossy fiancée who he met while in hospital, and Tilly is annoyed that Harry has arranged the wedding in the first week of June without OK-ing it with Geoff and Tilly first, as he should know by now that June is when the oil rig inspections take place, and Tilly has to attend. Geoff claims that Harry forgot, but this turns out to be a lie.

The inspections are cancelled, so Geoff and Tilly end up attending the wedding anyway.

This scene is recounted much later in the book.

Answer: Sol

Tilly first meets Geoff on a beach on a cold day, when he and the children are waiting for Frances, his ex-wife. Tilly offers to keep an eye out for Frances while Geoff takes the children to a cafe, and gives him her number in case he needs help in future.

She is seeing Sol at the time and later tells him she 'might have found his replacement'. She later bumps into Geoff at an ex-boyfriend's party and asks him why he didn't call her, and they get together shortly afterwards. By that time, Tilly and Sol have split up, but she meets Sol in a restaurant several years later and he gives her his number.

They start seeing each other again, and Tilly also asks Sol for financial advice when Geoff starts having money worries.

Answer: She makes a sexist comment.

Geoff moves in with Tilly and rents out his flat (without telling her), and has Minna and Harry on alternate weekends. Whenever Frances phones, she asks immediately for Geoff without saying hello to Tilly, and Tilly eventually has enough and refuses to speak to Frances unless she says 'hello Tilly' first. Frances comes to pick up the children when Geoff has to go to work urgently, and Tilly puts loud music on because she dislikes being honked at in her own home. She goes out to tell Frances where Geoff is and notices that Frances is having trouble with her car. Tilly tells her what the problem is but Frances says she'll 'have to wait until they send a man', which really annoys Tilly as she is a qualified engineer (a fact Frances barely acknowledges).

Tilly offers to let Frances and the children wait inside until someone comes to repair the car, but Frances insists on staying in the car, though Harry does come out for a bit. Geoff tells Tilly that Frances 'thinks in stereotypes'.

Answer: She gets angry and complains about Tilly interfering.

Tilly repeatedly tries to point things out to Geoff, such as the children not wearing seatbelts for several weeks or playing unsupervised on a dodgy estate, but he takes no notice, and when she does try to take matters into her own hands, Frances complains. One example is when Tilly goes to pick Minna up after a swimming lesson and sees a group of boys swinging bags around their heads and trying to hit other children, and nobody is doing anything about it. Tilly complains to the headmistress and Frances phones to complain a week later, although Tilly has to prise the information out of Geoff. Tilly is furious with Geoff, feeling that he and Frances are trying to have it both ways; they expect her to look after the children but don't want her getting too involved, even if it concerns the children's welfare.

This becomes a regular habit. Tilly is repeatedly left out of family matters, such as finding a secondary school for Harry; his grandma, who he barely sees, comes along on the school visit, whereas Tilly doesn't even know about it until Harry mentions it.

Answer: Stealing money

Minna mentions that Frances has a 'bump', but she actually means 'lump'. Frances asks Geoff to look after the children while she goes to a New Age retreat in America for several weeks. While Minna becomes even more indecisive than usual and takes a long time to do anything, Harry's attention span deteriorates, he becomes obsessed with morbid pieces of news, and he gets into trouble at school for stealing money and having tantrums and fights. Tilly and Geoff have an extremely bitter argument after Tilly finds out that the school sent a letter home, and that Harry's problems have been ongoing for several weeks, but Geoff argues that he didn't want to tell Tilly about it because he worried she'd use it against him.

Tilly finds some lumps under a carpet and discovers coins that Harry has hidden. She shows him what she's found and tells him to give it back, but also promises to talk to the teachers and ask them not to bring it up again, and tell them that Harry took the money because he was frightened his mother would die. Harry's behaviour subsequently improves.

Answer: Harry goes to prison for joyriding.

Harry does crash a car that Tilly gives him, but never goes to prison for joyriding. Donald, Tilly's boss, finds an old car that Harry can use while Tilly teaches him to drive, but after he writes it off, Frances lets him use hers. Tilly spots Minna in a cinema queue on a school day, but Geoff claims she was mistaken, and when Tilly says that she had a phone call from another child's mother about Harry offering her daughter drugs, Geoff insists that Harry is innocent. During this time, Tilly uses Sol as a means of escape.

Harry later moves in with Tod, a drug dealer, and becomes addicted to drugs himself, to the point where he has psychotic episodes and has to be hospitalised. He is convinced that Tilly can put thoughts into people's heads. Minna also has unprotected sex with her boyfriend after Frances' death, and becomes pregnant.

Answer: A printing shop

Geoff owns a printing shop called Print-It! Tilly does not give the business much thought until she notices Geoff is having money worries, when Frances calls and makes a point of mentioning that she's surprised Geoff is taking the kids out to fancy restaurants when he can't help pay Harry's university fees. Geoff also borrows large amounts from Tilly and she has to remind him to pay it back, and one of Geoff's employees phones to ask when she'll be paid. Tilly's mother has died and she (rightly) suspects that Geoff might ask her to lend him some of her inheritance, so she warns her brother Ed not to say anything if Geoff asks for money.

Tilly takes some of Geoff's financial documents to Sol and he discovers that Geoff has offered his flat as security to a mortgage-lending company, and has also sold his late father's house. Tilly is furious and is all set to kick Geoff out, only to find that Frances has died, and has to put her plans on hold. When Tilly's mother dies, she lies that her mother left all her money to a cat home, while Sol deals with the paperwork and has Tilly's inheritance put into an account. Sol later sends a businessman over to look at the shop when Geoff is planning to sell, and the businessman's son takes over, fires Geoff's staff and makes the shop far more successful.

Answer: Cornwall

Tilly and Geoff live in the northeast of England (the exact location isn't specified, but it's somewhere near Newcastle), and Josh's family live in a small village in Cornwall, at the other end of the country. Josh's grandmother Elise is the matriarch of the family and owns a large farm with several barns, one of which she gives to Minna and Josh to live in. Josh's overbearing family take Minna in and put pressure on the couple to get married, due to Minna being pregnant. Tilly and Geoff are unable to come to the wedding because Harry is still in hospital, although Geoff does go to his granddaughter's christening while Tilly is away at work. Minna claims that the wedding is a low-key one, but Tilly and Geoff deduce from the photos that Minna is lying and the wedding was far grander than she claims.

Answer: Geoff has been having an affair with Tara's mother.

Tilly and Geoff go to Harry's wedding, where they meet Minna's new family (who Tilly immediately dislikes). Tara is a Christian student who is working at the dispensary in the hospital where Harry is an inpatient, and thanks to her influence, Harry gives up drugs for good. After the speeches, Harry thanks Tilly for coming to the wedding and reveals that he did know about the inspections and had been worrying about whether Tilly and Geoff could make it or not, as Tara had been determined to get married in June and fulfil her late father's wish. Gloria, Tara's mother, had also put down a deposit on a holiday and was worried about losing it. Geoff had told Harry that he would talk to Tilly about the wedding and hopefully, she would be able to get out of the inspections.

Of course, Geoff has never told Tilly about any of this and Tilly realises that Geoff broke his promise. She talks to Gloria, who confirms that she would have lost money if she had had to cancel her holiday, and Tilly realises that Geoff had known about the wedding for much longer than he had claimed. Sol, Ed and Donald all defend Geoff, saying he was just trying to be nice and Tilly is deceitful herself, but Tilly has had enough and while Geoff is at Harry's graduation, she sells the house behind Geoff's back and has his things put into storage.

Answer: Car accident

Now homeless and jobless, Geoff is forced to stay with Minna until Elise kicks him out as she has friends coming to visit and needs the bed, and Tara does not want him in the house either as she finds it hard to concentrate with him around. Geoff eventually moves into a flat while Tilly is living in the country. She quits her job, much to Donald's anger, and has him and Sol forward all Geoff's letters to her. Sol begs Tilly to put Geoff out of his misery, so Tilly takes him at his word. She puts a package full of Geoff's old paperwork through his door, along with a note from a place called Folly Edge Hotel where she had previously stayed, making out that she is currently staying there.

Folly Edge is near a dangerous cliff, Folly Leap. Tilly makes sure to choose a night when the sky is dark and the tide is out, knowing that Geoff will come after her. Tilly has enclosed a map of the area, so Geoff knows how to get there, but she also hides a warning sign and opens a gate, tricking Geoff into driving over the edge to his death. Included in the package Tilly had put through Geoff's door is a final letter to Geoff, telling him she's leaving him, to make it look like a suicide. Ed, Sol and Donald all send their condolences, not knowing the truth. Tilly thinks that Geoff's death is payback for all the years she had wasted with him.