'The room shook, not violently, but more than was usual during the average dinner party...' When a neighbouring house is destroyed by what is said to be a gas leak, and a child disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker - a young married woman, bored and unhappy with her life - becomes obsessed with trying to find her. Very soon she's left wondering whether she has really ever known anybody or anything at all as her attempts at investigation, fired initially by frustration and curiosity, reveal that people long thought dead are still among the living, while the living are joining the dead and her own life becomes distinctly less boring. What begins in suburban South Oxford ends on a remote and unwelcoming Scottish island, as the hunt for the missing child takes Sarah out of her marriage and into a journey with a tormented, troubled ex-soldier who himself is being hunted by murderous and apparently official forces.