When Charlotte Bronte died in 1855, she left behind the start of a new novel. The twenty-page fragment introduced a lost girl and signalled the author's most compelling work since Jane Eyre. Now, almost150 years later, one of Ireland's foremost writers, Clare Boylan, has returned to this intriguing beginning and turned it into an astonishing story of mystery, atmosphere and page-turning suspense.

The arrival on Conway Fitzgibbon at Fuschia Lodge with his daughter Matilda is a source of delight to the headmistress, Miss Wilcox. The unsuccessful ladies' school is eager for new pupils, particularly one so finely dressed and boasting a father who is' quite the gentleman'. But as Christmas approaches, and Miss Wilcox inquiries about arrangements for the holidays, she is in for a shock. Conway Fitzgibbon, like the address he left behind, does not exist. So who is the mysterious Matilda? With Miss Wilcox unable to extract an answer from the girl, it falls to a local gentleman, Mr Ellin, and a childless widow, Isabel Chalfont, to unravel the truth, an investigation that begins as curiosity and ends up changing all their lives forever …

With all the wit and pathos of its gifted originator, Clare Boylan has seamlessly developed Bronte's story of a girl without a past into a remarkable portrait of a Victorian society with a shameful secret at its heart.