'In the spring of 1966, there was no one living with us, and the tension between my parents was left to grow like untended weeds. It was then that the gypsies came.' Emily Iris looks forward to the times her parents welcome house guests to their family's unhappy home on the edge of Johannesburg. For a while, for as long as the visitors are there, her mother and father will put their quarrels aside and be like a real family. One spring, a family of wanderers - an Australian couple and their two boys - comes to stay. But the arrival of these 'gypsies' starts a chain of events that will shatter Emily's hopes of a happy family life and change them all forever.