As children, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy attended an exclusive boarding-school in the English countryside. Idyllic in some ways yet vaguely sinister, ''Hailsham'' was a place of intense friendships, mysterious rules, and ''guardians'' who constantly reminded the students how special they were. Now thirty-one, Kathy looks back on their shared past and tells how she and her friends gradually came to understand the shocking reason for the careful nurturing they had received. An affecting meditation on friendship, love and mortality.