She is a runaway circus clown, and she has been living in the derelict Victorian manor for months — dusting, patching leaks, feeding the crows — long before anyone bought it. Caught with her foot through a rotten floorboard, she bargains for a room and stays on as a housemate. Thirty-five chapters of clown rituals, moonlit rooftops and slow devotion, until the footsteps in the hall turn out to belong to something that knows exactly what she is.