Alfred Gibson's funeral has taken place at Westminister Abbey, and his wife of twenty years, Dorothea, has not been invited. The Great Man favours his children and a clandestine mistress over his estranged wife. Dorothea revisits their early courtship before the birth of too many children snapped her vitality, and discovers the devious nature and hypnotic power of this celebrity author. Now she needs to face her grown up children, and worse, her nemesis of ten years, the charming Miss Ricketts. This is a re-telling of the lives of Charles and Catherine Dickens.