Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (1890-1943), was a prolific English author who wrote under the pseudonym E. M. Delafield. She is best known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle-class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s.

In 'Squirrel in a Cage', she tells the story of the ending of a relationship between two lovers. The narrative moves fluidly between the real thoughts of each of the lovers, Sacha Michaelson and Ian Berringer, and their actual conversation where each speaks but without saying what they really mean.