At a very young age, Emilie and her brother Jean-Baptiste are entrusted to their maternal grandmother and their aunt, who live in a manor house in Croisic. While their parents are in India, they go through hell at the hands of an immensely wealthy but mad grandmother and an alcoholic aunt. Emilie’s only ray of hope is the prospect of her beloved mother visiting them in the holidays. By the time her parents finally return, Emilie is twelve years old The family settles down in Paris where, beneath the surface of an apparently serene bourgeois existence, the true hell begins. The idolised mother turns out to be a manipulative and violent monster. Emilie tries to protect herself from the toxic relationship between her parents by plunging herself into her studies and by playing the piano. Very gifted, she does well in her piano competitions and a successful career beckons… until the day when her mother deliberately burns her hand on the eve of a major competition. Meanwhile her brother, who has been diagnosed with dyslexia, is struggling at school. The father for his part is entirely indifferent and ends up abandoning the family home. The violence goes on for several years, and whereas Emilie is in constant revolt, her brother Jean-Baptiste sinks into a depression that no one picks up on. The vicious circle seems to be unending until a dramatic incident occurs, whereupon Emilie leaves her mother and agrees to go to boarding school. She will not see her mother again until twenty years later in the old manor house where she has not set foot since childhood.