It is 1969. Kim Tanner has been living happily in rural Essex, blissfully unaware that she is not the natural daughter of cleaning lady Peggy. But when the truth is revealed after Peggy’s death, Kim heads to Ealing to find the woman she believes to be her birth mother – the glamorous, bohemian writer, Imogen St Clair, who was forced to give her illegitimate child up for adoption thirteen years earlier. Of all the children who have come forward over the years believing themselves to be the baby “Charlotte” of Imogen’s bestselling memoir, none has been anything like Kim.

Before long Kim moves to London to live with Imogen, – beautiful and hopelessly impractical with her grubby house, sponging boyfriend and hippie ideals. Kim – bright, streetwise and practical – with her dog, Welly proceeds to bring order to chaos. However, Peggy left no papers to explain Kim’s background and when concerned friends start to do a little digging they soon begin to unearth a story far murkier than the one Kim had grown up believing – a story spiralling back to the summer of a famous child murder…