In the last year of the Second World War three deaf girls are born in the same north of England village. Miracle, coincidence, tragedy or omen? As children they discover each other on the shore and call each other sisters. One of them, Judith Salt, returns to the village aged sixty to tell the story of that first meeting, and her later return, aged twenty-five, pregnant, and determined that someone was going to die. Payback for the fate of her sister, Abigail Sempie, grade III deaf, who, with only a syllable at her disposal, called herself E and somehow impressed her identity on the world. Their story is about deafness, the senses, the struggle for language and recognition, but family feuds, lies and secrets lie at its heart.