Mouse de Bruin is under siege. Without a voice since the age of six, she is trying to work things out about the world.
She and her mother have moved into a rented Pennine farmhouse in which reminders of the man who lived there previously, William Crosby, lie all around her. Fighting to hold the outside world at bay, Mouse becomes increasingly drawn to William, a man who seems to have been haunted by secrets throughout the long life he spent in this house.
As Mouse's investigations lead her towards some of the people who knew him, she unearths a collection of letters about William's experience in Europe as a young officer in the chaotic final weeks of World War II. But why, as Mouse begins to uncover the mysteries of William's past life, is she so keen to eliminate all traces of her own?