Is it healthy for ten-year-old Amy Turner to be so obsessed with the story of Anne Frank? So much so that she and her Jewish friend, Ruth, hide away in the attic to recreate the harrowing experience of life in the Secret Annexe, under the evil shadow of the Holocaust?

Their parents certainly don't think so. Amy's family worry about the morbidity unbecoming in children, while Ruth's academic father wants to protect his daughter from the horrors of the Shoah until she is of an age to cope with it.

The adults however can hardly be said to uphold the family values displayed by the Frank family. Their musical-chair rounds of marital infidelity are heading towards the break-up of both marriages.