''Tragedy and comedy fuse together perfectly in a labyrinthine mystery of emotional and psychological complexity'' Jo Brand
Fleeing Scotland in the wake of family disgrace, 16-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a failing girls'' boarding school on a remote part of the south English coast. Despite the eccentricities of her new Headmistress, who warns her of the dangers of the Cold War and the ever-present threat of the bomb, St Anne''s seems like a refuge to Ida. But all this is about to change. For a start, her new room-mate is the infamous Louise Adler, potential arsonist and hardened outcast.
Meanwhile, the geography teacher Eleanor Alston, in her late thirties, a disastrous love affair in her wake, faces the new term with weary resignation. But the fragile ecosystem of the school is disrupted by the arrival of a new teacher, Matthew Langfield. Eleanor has an uneasy feeling he is not who he says he is.
And things only get worse when
