The Saint Zita Society

'Someone had told Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but
she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still
he liked the idea that she was his neighbour.'


Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home
on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco
Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich.
The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners,
decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of
domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their
grievances.


When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings,
the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with
human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover
he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane,
where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex's
most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service
provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages
he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some
kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about
ridding the world of evil spirits . . .


Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place.