"Now for the 'secret orchard' part of my story. For many years I had a mistress and she presented me with twin girls ten years ago and another girl eight years ago..." thus wrote Roger Ackerley in a letter opened by his son J.R. Ackerley on his father's death. In this account his daughter, Diana, attempts to solve the mysteries that surrounded her childhood, her beautiful, bewildering mother, Muriel Perry and "Uncle", the shadowy figure who dominated the hidden world in which she grew up.