Picking up her pace, Frances saw a woman in the shadowy depths of the garden. She wore a wide hat and a trailing pink dress; a white hand emerged from her sleeve. There came upon Frances a sensation that sometimes overtook her when she was looking at a painting: space was foreshortened, time stilled.

When Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne he was married with a young son.

Now Charlie and Frances live in Sydney with her dog, Rod, and an unshakeable sense that they have tipped the world on its axis. Everything is alien, unfamiliar, exotic: haunting, even.

A rare, beguiling and brilliant ghost story by Miles Franklin Literary Award-winner Michelle de Kretser.