Young Jeanette Walker often wonders what became of her mother who disappeared without trace during a wartime bombing raid thirteen years before. Was she killed outright her body never recovered? Or did she run off with another man as Jeanette's Great Aunt Ethel insists? Since Grace Walker vanished Aunt Ethel has ruled the household with a rod of iron imposing a strict curfew on her teenage niece and appropriating most of her meagre wages. But when Jeanette embarks to find out what really happened to her mother she isn't prepared for the hornet's nest of family secrets and lies that her investigation will stir up.