Nine-year-old Frankie Appleton likes to count gates.One day she hopes to design the perfect gate - a gate to keep the bad things out.Little does she know that the bad things have already got in.Now her mother is dead, and the only other person with a house key has disappeared.Frankie thinks she knows who it is. But first she has to prove it.A delicately brutal exploration of what lies behind closed doors, and of the secrets and lies that form the fabric of every family, The Weight of Small Things is as charming as it is chilling.