Two women, brought together by a child, and a secret that will change everything... London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara in the London Orphans' Workhouse, Bess Bright returns to retrieve the child. Fearing the worst, that Clara may have died there, Bess can't shake her astonishment when she is assured that she has already gone looking for her daughter. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who took her little girl...and why. Less than a mile from Bess's city accommodation, in a quiet and dreary terraced house on the outskirts of London, a young widow hasn't left her house in a decade. When her close friend, an ambitious young doctor from the Orphans' Hospice, convinces her to hire someone to care for her daughter, she has doubts about welcoming a new person into her home and her life. But her past threatens to catch up with her and tear apart the world she has carefully built.