With enemies like that, who needs friends! Five short stories about tough women and meek men, about the battle for daily bread and life as a millionaire, about the loyalty of gentlemen and about hate as the flipside of love. A painter living with her little granddaughter Sasha in a country cottage has three enemies: Anka, the housekeeper, who cooks for the granddaughter but never has any food left over for the painter when she emerges, exhausted, from her studio; Tanka, her father's second wife, who is trying to thwart what little contact the father and daughter still have left; and Wanka, her neighbour, who took it on his own authority to move the garden fence. To the painter's disadvantage of course. These three people would make her life hell – if she did not have her art, her dog and her granddaughter to love. But when her enemies drop out of the picture one after another, the painter realises that something important has gone with them.