At the age of forty, when his wife leaves marking a turning point in his life, Joseph Eyscheil lets himself drift off into the past, particularly memories of his twin sister Élise in whose shadow he has always hovered. The strange and dazzling Élise became a writer but disappeared thirteen years ago in circumstances that have never been explained. She left behind three novels in which Joseph feels she recreated their childhood and all of which feature the same place: the house next door to their childhood home, surrounded by its garden. 
The descriptions of this garden gradually become a pivot for Joseph between the past and the present, reality and fiction, innocence and adulthood.
Where do things go when they’re gone, where do people go when they’re dead? What were the twins looking for the summer they were twelve and they used to slip under the gates into that garden at night?
By delving back into the memories of those trees and lawns, Joseph rediscovers a whole neighbourhood and a whole era: the street, the neighbours, their family home, their primary school and high school. A long lost childhood he can read about and dream about. Heat wave summers and the gradual disintegration of a life that looked perfect on the surface.
When he in turn begins to write, Joseph wants to explore his memories, especially of his sister who is very different to the attractive public persona she would one day become. Writing about the past usually amounts to reinventing it. Paradoxically, this may also be how the truth finally emerges.

Born in Toulouse in 1983, Émilie Desvaux wrote a first novel, À l’attention de la femme de ménage, published by Stock in 2011. It won the Femme magazine prize for a first novel.