Lottie is 19. Over the breakfast table she announces she’s getting married. Nobody knew she had a boyfriend. She didn’t really. Lottie seems to have skipped over the dating ritual. She’s marrying her middle-aged music teacher, Edgar Lennox. The span of years between them? A whopping 45.

What we learn about Lottie doesn’t inspire any confidence. So when her mother, Hattie, says: “Whatever for?” we are with her mother.

Tessa Hadley presents background details that trip the reader into involvement. And those details can be associative or irrational. It’s better if you feel something’s wrong with a character in a story. About literature, don’t overthink. You’ll get it wrong. Why don’t we trust Lottie?

When you’re writing a story you call in the reserves.That is, you don’t hold anything back. Lottie’s home is a stage. It was a tall, thin old house. Hadley says that it’s worn to fit the shape of the family.

Hadley uses the house. Lottie’s parents go to see Edgar Lennox. When they come back home, they’re standing at the foot of the staircase, talking over the results.

Lottie’s younger brother, Noah, is at the head of the stairs, listening. This steep staircase functions like a funnel. Sound is drawn upward. You sense that if you want any privacy in Lottie’s house, you have to retreat upstairs like to a crow’s nest. The family seems underfoot down below. Hadley said the house was thin, which I read as emotionally claustrophobic. No wonder Lottie wants to leave. We are with Lottie.

Then there’s Tessa Hadley’s gossamer dialogue, so fluid, so bright…so funny.

Noah listens. The family’s below in a jumble boots, family junk. Their own Sargasso sea of household items is at the bottom of that staircase on grey and white tiles. Of course you can picture it. Hadley has eyes…literary eyes.

The conversation? Their daughter thinks that Edgar’s a great man and he thinks so too. Edgar can see what it must look like in “any ordinary perspective”. Response? “How dare he call us ordinary?” Edgar is married. His wife not-for-long, Valerie, stalks this wacked-out conversation like a wounded tigress. Her back to the wall. Her own wall. She insists she’s keeping the house.

I’ve given you a sampler of the literary delights in Tessa Hadley’s short story, Married Love. Be at ease with my fictional appetite.There’s a lot more chocolate left in the box.

The story “Married Love” is in the collection of that name, coming from Harper Perennial on November 20th.