Liza lives with her reclusive mother, Eve, in the gatehouse of Shrove, a remote English country house. Liza has never been to school and has been kept apart from the world. When Eve is about to arrested for murder, she sends Liza away to a friend in London. Instead Liza runs off with the boyfriend she had met recently. She spends much of the book, like Scheherazade, telling the story of her life to Sean, as she gradually learns to live in the world.

The story may be quiet and slow paced, but Rendell held my attention the whole way through.