'One of our most impressive novelists' Sunday Express

When Stella first meets Martyn, he's just a stranger on a train. She knows nothing at all about him. But very quickly she is won over by his charm and breathtaking illusions, and when he asks her to marry him, she agrees.

However, as they begin their life together, Stella starts to feel uneasy. What exactly is the show-stopping illusion he claims to be working on, locked away in that room? Who are those men that visit the house at strange hours? And why are her questions never answered? As Stella realises that she barely knows the man she married, her thoughts turn to escape.

"An immaculate artist: understated, unshowy, a careful and economical craftswoman of language and all the loose, unwieldy stuff of emotion" - Scotsman

"Assured, skilful, delicately comic and mutedly sad" - The Sunday Times

"An elegant, elegiac exploration of love, loss, memory and longing" - Independent on Sunday