Sarah's husband, Tom, disappeared without trace eleven years ago.
Now her son, David, has died.
Tom appears at David's funeral and tries to reestablish contact, which Sarah refuses but Kate, her daughter, accepts.
The growing closeness between Kate and her father worries Sarah because she believes that Tom is dishonest and unreliable, that he abandoned her and their two children all those years ago. So how can they trust him now?
Then Sarah finds David's diary and follows the steps he took in search of his father, wanting to know whether he found him, whether he met him, and what happened. But, in following the steps David took, it becomes a journey of self-discovery for Sarah: what she uncovers forces her to reassess her view of herself, her origins and her certainties.

A relationship novel, but also a detection novel with a difference; this story traces a woman's drive to uncover and understand the truth about a family she thought she knew - her own.