Experience had signed her face with a secret, a promise whose meaning people would still watch, still desire to explore and to possess. When Sibyl Jardine moves into The Priory, the beautiful house on a primrose-covered hill, ten-year-old Rebecca is spellbound by the glamorous and enigmatic old woman. Drawn into the intricate web of Mrs Jardine's life - her second husband, her errant daughter, her estranged grandchildren - Rebecca discovers that the complex and scandalous history of the Jardine family is linked to her own. The tale of the unlikely friendship between an old woman and a young girl, and of a turbulent life seen through the eyes of innocence, this is one of Rosamond Lehmann's finest novels. 'Probably my favourite of her novels. She has every quality that a great writer should possess . above all, an astonishing, unembarrassed emotionality' JOANTHAN COE 'Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers, of daughters, of suffering' MARGARET DRABBLE 'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' Elizabeth Jane Howard.