Stella leaves Australia as a young girl and comes with her widowed mother to live in London. The year is 1856. She makes friends with Edith Hall, whose father is a proper English gentleman and a friend of the author Charles Dickens. Stella is jealously protected by her old nurse, a former convict called Moak, whose powers of white magic turn into black as time passes ... Stella's English fairy-tale grows increasingly sinister.
