Mati is nine years old. She has lost her mother. Her father is wallowing in grief and it is left to her grandmother to take care as best she can of what remains of the family. One day, Mati doesn’t come home from school. She has gone off with her “angel”, Rémi, a young man in his twenties who suffers from mild autism. Rémi works at the post office, where he has taken to replying to the letters Mati has been sending to her mother in her new home in heaven.

As the pair escape from their drab existences, everyone fears the worst. And the worst comes to pass. The father is injured and left paralysed. The grandmother, now desperate, tells him a terrible secret. Mati will return, but her “angel” will be the victim of fierce prejudice.

The world has not understood the purity of their intentions, their childhood innocence untouched by scheming and secrets. How could anyone believe that it all really did begin with the best of intentions?