Thirteen-year-old Nathan is furious when Mum hauls him off to Cornwall for Christmas and then tells him they are to move there for good. He knows he must accept the fact that his dad has left them to live with another woman, but he is desperate to be back with him in London. He has never been separated from his best friend, Tom, either. Life, it seems to him, has become intolerably unfair.After a blazing row with his mum, Nathan runs away for the afternoon—only to discover, entirely by chance, a cottage, a garden by the sea, and an enchantingly beautiful girl who seems more miserable than he is himself. The girl in the attic. Who is she, and what is the family secret that haunts her life? Nathan suddenly realises that seeing the girl again and finding out about her have become an obsession. He lays a careful plan that enables him to return to the cottage, where he discovers her name—Rosalie—and that her problems put his own in the shade. He longs to help her. One night, alone in the attic, he is welcomed by the ghosts of Rosalie’s family, whose frail spirits and soft laughter stay with him in his dreams.Nathan enlists the help of his grandfather, gradually managing to unearth some of the secrets that dominate Rosalie’s life and that of her bullying father. And when it comes to the crunch, it is Nathan himself who succeeds in preventing the disaster that threatens to destroy their lives. Valerie Mendes’ gripping, fast-moving novel explores the strengths of friendship, and the inescapable, binding pull of teenage love.