Brought up in the USA, lovely Holly Crozier has always been under her mother's spell: she even spent fifteen years believing that the British were unlikeable because her mother insisted that was the case. But her elder brother Jim had no such qualms, and spent three years working in London for the art dealer Lovells before he was killed in a hit-and-run accident. So when her mother dies, Holly, now in her early twenties, heads straight for England. She is alone in the world, and her only hope of finding someone she might be able to call family is to trace Jim's girlfriend, Caroline, and the baby she was carrying at the time of his death.
When Holly reaches London, however, she discovers that finding Caroline won't be a simple matter of making a couple of telephone calls. Ex-colleagues of Jim's are reluctant, almost frightened, to discuss his last days at Lovells, and Holly senses danger and intrigue. Jim's best friend, the handsome but mysterious Steve Maitland, seems to have more of an idea than most of what Jim could have stumbled upon during his last days, but even he is cagey about what he knows, and about why, just maybe, Caroline doesn't want to be found.
