'Adele is not answerable for either her mother's faults or yours ...now that I know that she is, in a sense, parentless - forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir - I shall cling closer to her than before' (from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte). Emma Tennant's new novel tells the story of little Adele Varens, to whom Jane Eyre is governess in Charlotte Bronte's classic novel. The illegitimate daughter of a celebrated Parisian actress, Adele is only eight when she comes to Thornfield Hall to live with the forbidding Edward Fairfax Rochester, who may or may not be her father. Adele longs to return to the glitter of Paris and to the mother who has been lost to her. Her loneliness would be complete were it not for the young governess who arrives to care for her, although Adele at first regards her with suspicion and dislike. But there is another shadow hanging over their lives: the dark secret locked away in a high garret. Adele's curiosity will imperil them all, shatter their happiness and finally send her fleeing, frightened and alone, back to Paris.