Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 6- Kathleen Farrell's The Cost of Living with a foreword by Jane Fallon

Idealistic Alexandra is throwing a party to meet a more glamorous crowd. Marianne, more sardonic, worries it'll be the usual sort.

The party is in Alexandra's attic flat. Marianne will contribute a few bottles of red optimistically labelled Bordeaux. Can it be judged a success? There's Donald the bus conductor with high-brow dreams, nervous bespectacled Bernhardt and Marius the ghostwriter. Not to mention a brace of Peters. It's left to sexy, young Pisa and riotous, middle-aged Mummy (neither invited) to steal the show.

Yet, after the party both Marianne and Alexandra find themselves caught in unexpected - sometimes far from romantic - relationships. Meeting people, it turns out, has the most peculiar consequences.

Is that really the cost of living?