When her mother, Eve, tells Liza that she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified. Although seventeen years of age, she has never been on a bus or a train, has never played with a child of her own age. She has almost no knowledge of a world described by her mother as evil & destructive. Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man. & he is not the first. With -100 in cash, Liza is cast aside. However, she is not alone. There is one particular secret she has kept from her mother
- her love affair with a young man who worked in the big house. With him, gradually Liza learns about the world, about herself, & must come to terms with the possibility that the murderous violence of her mother may be present in her.