Broadstairs Kent 1851. Once a sleepy fishing village now a select sea-bathing resort this is a place where people come to take the air and where they come to hide. Delphine and her cousin Julia have come to the seaside with a secret one they have been running from for years. But this is a place with its own secrets and a dark past. And when the body of a young girl is found washed up on the beach a mysterious message scrawled on the sand beside her the past returns to haunt Broadstairs and its inhabitants. As the incomers are drawn into the mystery and each others' lives they realise they cannot escape what happened here years before.