"I love her more than life and I failed her. I won't fail her again."

Middle-aged loner Sylvia is struggling through the aftermath of the doomed love affair which wrecked her marriage and damaged her relationship with her daughter. Teenaged Antonia, angry and resentful, has always wanted to meet her grandmother. Desperate to be close to Antonia again, Sylvia takes her to the forgotten Devon estate where she grew up, and to the mother who once so deeply and unforgivably hurt her.

To Sylvia's surprise, the estate's much-fabled hermit is still alive. He is mute and mysterious, and Sylvia was discouraged from approaching him as a child. And now that she is back after a forty-year absence, Sylvia realises there is so much she never truly understood about her upbringing. Her mother is giving nothing away, so when Sylvia finally approaches the hermit, he finally talks, and reveals more than Sylvia ever imagined