When her mother, Eve, tells Liza she must leave their remote home, the gatehouse of a country mansion, Liza is terrified Although 17, she has never been on a bus or a train or played with a child of her own age She has almost no knowledge of the world her mother describes as evil and destructive Their strange, enclosed life together is over because Eve has killed a man and he is not the first Liza is cast adrift but is not alone She keeps her love affair secret from her mother, and from her lover she learns about the world and about herself