'I don't know what he hit me with. Something hard, that's all, something hard against the back of my head and then lights out, I hit the floor.' When she's attacked and knocked unconscious, social worker Jo Elliott assumes she was merely unlucky: the random victim of an opportune mugging. Gradually, the doubts set in. A half-glimpsed face watching her in the supermarket; an attempted break-in at night. As the days pass, Jo begins to suspect she was deliberately targeted. Although she caught only the briefest glimpse, she can't help feeling she's seen her attacker before. As she begins to piece the clues together, Jo becomes more and more convinced that what at first appeared to be a random attack might have some connection with a case she was involved in eight years earlier. A case involving a problem family called the Metcalfes. A case that went horribly, terribly wrong...