The book opens with a black page with a white border; on the next page a girl lies on a black background, face to the floor, as if she had just died, but later turns out to be very much alive and able to sit up. Further along, a pair of girls' tights cast in plaster suggest growth and physical presence, but the child is gone: the fabric is a rigid white, no longer containing hips or grazed knees, an abandoned cocoon idealised and hung up by those who have been left behind.