Jean Loftus has lived at Ashe House for more than 40 years. Its tidy
contours, the soft colors of the garden, speak to an orderly, gracious,
supremely English life. But when workmen unearth a skeleton from that
garden, the skeletons from Jean's past begin rising to the surface. The
life they speak of'a childhood in Revolutionary Russia, chaotic years as
a refugee between the two world wars'was neither orderly nor English.
Zita Daunsey, Jean's neighbor in this cozy Sussex town, would like to
help Jean protect her secrets. But this task is made more difficult with
the sudden arrival of a mysterious, aggressively inquisitive Russian
student. What aging sin is Jean so anxious to conceal' And at what point
does Zita become an accomplice to it'