As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, and together they invented a language that was just their own.
She hasn’t seen her mother since the age of sixteen, though – almost a lifetime ago – and those memories have faded.
Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature. A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel’s isolation and throws up questions from long ago.
She begins to remember the private vocabulary of her childhood.
