Synopsis

“My friends describe me as frighteningly sensible, not at all the sort of woman who would fall for an actor. And his home. And his family.”

Orphaned by drink, drugs and rock n’ roll, Gwen Rowland is invited to spend Christmas at her actor boyfriend Alfie’s family home – a ramshackle Tudor manor in Norfolk. Soon after she arrives, Gwen notices something isn’t quite right. Alfie acts strangely toward his family and is reluctant to talk about the past. Alfie’s mother, a celebrated children’s author, keeps to her room, living in a twilight world, unable to distinguish between past and present, fact and fiction. And then there’s the enigma of an old family photograph…

When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old quilt, she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past and realises there’s much more to the family history than she’s been told. It seems there are things people don’t want her to know.

And one of those people is Alfie…