The four of them were close when they worked together in the 1960s: Natasha, Prudence, Rachel and Maisie.

Now, twenty years later, Natasha, newly divorced and back from America with a fifteen-year-old daughter, decides there must be a reunion. Pru, always the mysterious one, deeply involved with her commune in Cornwall, unexpectedly offers to host at Prospect House, a property she has inherited in the Malvern Hills. Rachel, married to her former boss, a Liberal MP, gladly leaves a tangled domestic situation to join the friends she hasn't seen for so long.

And Maisie ... Maisie, perhaps the most vulnerable of the four, mother of five children, married to the unpredictable Edward, fails to arrive at Prospect House.

The drama of her disappearance has a far-reaching effect on the lives and destinies of them all...