When she was about six Claire started wondering what had happened to her parents. She tried to ask her grandparents about them, but they got so upset with her that she cried for days and decided never to bring up the subject again.

It was vast, this mansion of her grandparents where she had grown up, but Claire didn’t know it at the time; she never questioned what she saw because she’d never known another way of life. For her the mansion and its garden were the world.