The Second World War is over, peace has been declared but the ravages remain and the Lytton family must confront the future and themselves. Kit Lytton, blinded in his early twenties in service for the RAF, is coming to terms with the fact that his father is not Oliver Lytton, as he thought, but the famous children's author Sebastian Brooke. His sense of betrayal is immense, but worse is the discovery that the woman he loves is his sister. Barty Miller is now in the curious position of owning a majority share of Lyttons, the publishing house belonging to the family that brought her up. Now rich and powerful, though alone, Barty is far from the cowed slum child rescued by Celia Lytton years before. But how will she act now towards the family who always made her feel she did not belong? And what secrets in the Lytton past remain to be discovered?