This is a magical, enchanting tale, with stunning illustrations that will transport you into another world. Flame-haired Charity Delafield has grown up in a vast, isolated house - most of which she is forbidden to explore - with her fiercely strict father. With only her kindly nurse, Rose, and her cat Mr Tompkins for company, she knows very little of the outside world - or of her own family"s shadowy past. What she does know is that she is never to go outside unsupervised. And she is never to over-excite herself, because of the mysterious "condition" that she has been told she suffers from. But Charity has a secret. All her life, she has had the same strange dream - a dream of a dark corridor, hidden somewhere in the house. Then, one day, Charity stumbles across the corridor. It leads to a door ...and suddenly she realises things are not quite what they seem.