'When I was born in 1961, it was to instant campus celebrity.' Frederica Hatch, the charming, precocious child of sweetly bonkers parents, has an idyllic, if not spoilt, childhood in the grounds of the small, not very good, Dewing college. Everything is perfect - and then she discovers that her father has a secret. Worse still, his secret has a name: the glamorous and untrustworthy Laura Lee French, his estranged wife. And worst of all, Laura Lee's new job at Dewing is going to shatter the Hatches' little world.