How many of us have seen a young vagrant on the street, and then wondered what awful set of circumstances, or unhappy twist of fate, had brought them to where they are now? Indeed, every homeless person has a tragic story to tell, and Toby's Burden is just one of them. A mugging victim arrives at a London hospital. He looks, but does not sound or behave, like an archetypal vagrant. Duty doctor Candida Cornish instantly recognises him: it is her long-lost brother Toby, not seen or heard from since vanishing from their home village in Kent many years before. In the days that follow, the siblings try to discover what had gone so terribly wrong for Toby in childhood. However, nobody will be able to help him, until he can first help himself, and start banishing all those ghosts he'd been carrying around for nearly 20 years.