Twelve-year-old Larkin is obsessed with unravelling the whereabouts of his absent father, a sailor he knows next to nothing about. His mother remains infuriatingly vague on the matter. Can he trust the charismatic stranger that has come into his life? Fifty years later, Harriet's beloved aunt dies, passing on to her niece a bird cage and the urgent request never to open it. Then the voices start. When her family puts her in a mental institution, Harriet...