Nobel prize winner. From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes and a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic. As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hail sham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.