Seventy-two-year-old, red-haired Winnie - homeless and abandoned time and again by those she's trusted - would say she's no trouble. She is content to let the days go by, minding her own business, bothering no one. Winnie would rather not recall the past, and at her age, doesn't see much point in thinking about the future. But she is catapulted out of her exile when a young girl robs her of her suitcase and her wig - her only material possessions.

Winnie then embarks on a journey to find the thief, and what begins as a search for stolen belongings becomes the rediscovery of a stolen life. Forced to take stock of how events long buried have brought her to a derelict house on the edge of nowhere, she relives the secrets of a past she had disowned.

As she pieces together the fragments of her life, Winnie recognizes that she is no longer simply on a hunt for stolen goods. After all these years, she has not escaped from her life at all: she has been circling it, and now must come to terms with it.

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Trezza Azzopardi was born in Cardiff. She is a graduate of the creative writing school at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of Remember Me and The Hiding Place, a national bestseller and Man Booker Prize finalist. Azzopardi lives in Norwich, England.