Recently expelled from boarding school, 14-year-old Vanessa watches as her autocratic, glamorous mother unravels. Her friend Alan McAlpine offers an impossible comfort, one that she cannot accept. Over the course of four years in the Southern Highlands of Scotland, she tells a tale of desire and loss, power and devotion. But nothing is what it seems, and the world Vanessa has built for herself is as treacherous as glass: fragile, filled with half-truths and reflections.