Marilyn Howe and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo, until one night Kathleen doesn’t come home . . .

Fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting strange.

Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs. Howe has disappeared once more. And for the second time he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland . . . when a woman’s body washes up on the beach.