Jo Cooper leads an uneventful life, selling jewellery on a Greenwich market stall, babysitting her neighbours' kids, and trying not to pay too much attention to the noises made by the S&M devotees who live next door. Home for Jo is a top floor flat in the Old Kent Road council block, Boddington Heights. An ex-drug-addict herself, she has a penchant for rescuing people: waifs and strays, a Ukranian refugee whose cause she champions and the man in buttock-less leather trousers she finds chained to the roof of her building But Jo's white-knight tendencies land her in trouble when a day-trip to Brighton ends with her helping a frightened girl to escape from some Russian thugs. The mysterious woman overturns Jo's life, plunging her into the world of illegal immigration and prostitution, where human lives are ruthlessly traded, and violence and distrust are rife. But just who exactly is it that Jo has saved? Is she Irena, a circus performer with the Flying Poliakovs, or Tatiana, a teenage prostitute, betrayed by her brother and on the run from a dangerous gang? Either way, her arrival in Boddington Heights means that Jo's life will never be the same again.