Paperback. Pub the Date: September. 2008 Pages: 224 in Publisher by: Harpercollins For young Mark. The world has turned as bleak and gray as the ighton winter. Separated from his real father and home in. London. He's-come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone. trying to master the skateboard. while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all. his once-viant mother has grown listless and weary. no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room.But on a damp and chilly evening. an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea. cakes. and sympathy ... and the key to a secret. bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human m...