One stormy February afternoon Clara Marshall collected her daughters, six-year-old Lorraine and five-year-old Janine, from school. They were never seen again. Richard Marshall, Clara's heartbroken husband, had discovered his wife was having an affair with an Australian backpacker and believed her to have run away with him, taking the children with her, destroying the family for ever. That was twenty-seven years ago. John Kelly, veteran journalist, covered the case when he was a trainee reporter and he suspected something far more sinister. His own enquiries could discover no trace of an Australian backpacker, or a journey abroad by Clara and her children. Detective Superintendent Karen Meadows has been familiar with case since childhood and she is only too aware that many suspect Marshall of murdering his wife and children. But where are the bodies? And what is the motive? Then extraordinary events reawaken the case and Kelly and Karen become determined to discover what happened to Clara and her children so long ago, and to seek justice for them...