Is it the houses in the dark, brooding yard that are haunted? Or the women and girls who live and stay there? All of the female characters in this modern ghost story have many reasons to be unhappy, and as the story unfolds we gradually learn about their relationships and feelings towards one another. There are no notable male characters in this book at all, just plenty of sad histories, and intriguing theories. The women/mothers are as full of angst as the troubled, struggling teens and twelve year old Maude, who is the most affected of all by the strange happenings in their holiday home. I tried to feel sympathy for her step-mother, she desperately wants a baby and is not always a pleasant person, perhaps understandably as her husband clears off back to work at the earliest opportunity, when it was him who insisted on their seaside break and booked the spooky holiday cottage. The buildings and land under the crumbling cliff don't have any appeal and I for one, wouldn't want to remain even one night there!