When the grandfather clock downstairs mysteriously strikes thirteen, it seems to be connected with a magical garden.

Tom - who is lonely and unhappy - has been told the garden is no longer there, but he discovers it, enters it, and makes friends with Hattie.

While he wants to stay in the garden for ever, Hattie yearns to grow up and escape.

Tom works out that the garden somehow belongs to the past, and that Hattie probably died long ago.

He struggles to outwit the passing of time but he fails, and everything seems to have ended in disaster.

However, there is a brilliant and unexpected ending in which Hattie's past and Tom's present are happily reconciled. Illustrated by Susan Einzig, with an Afterword by Victor Watson.