Back in 1888, the young, art-loving Harriet arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disintegrate into mystery and deception...

As she sits in her Bloomsbury home, with her two birds for company, elderly Harriet Baxter sets out to relate the story of her acquaintance, nearly four decades previously, with Ned Gillespie, a talented artist who never achieved the fame she maintains he deserved. Back in 1888, the young, art-loving Harriet arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. After a chance encounter she befriends the Gillespie family and soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes - leading to a notorious criminal trial - the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disintegrate into mystery and deception...

Prizes
Shortlisted for Galaxy National Book Awards: Specsavers Popular Fiction Book of the Year 2011.

Jane Harris was born in Belfast and brought up in Glasgow. In 2007, she was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year and the South Bank Show Times Breakthrough Award. Her debut novel, The Observations, was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. She lives in London with her husband Tom.