Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, grief, and mental illness.

At the beginning of the novel, the narrator, Matthew, is watching his neighbor, Mr. Charles, from his bedroom window. Outside, Mr. Charles is closely inspecting his flower garden. From the view from his bedroom, Matthew notices the sunburn on the top of Mr. Charles’s head—he tends to notice a lot of things from his bedroom window. Matthew lives on a quiet street in a suburb outside of London, his house being one of seven in his cul-de-sac. All the houses on Matthew’s street look the same, save for the Rectory, which resembles “a guest at a Halloween party where no one else had bothered to show up” (8). The Rectory is inhabited by Old Nina, the vicar’s widow, who rarely leaves home and always keeps a lit lamp in the front room window. Matthew watches Nina and his other neighbors from the spare room at the front of his house. Though Matthew’s parents refer to the spare room as an office, it was originally intended to be a nursery; still in the room are a baby’s crib mobile and a wall of unopened boxes and shopping bags.