Twelve hours after a woman's broken body is washed up on a deserted shore on the south coast of England, her traumatised three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away walking the streets of Poole, alone and apparently abandoned.
Why was Kate Sumner killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea? Police suspicion centres on a young actor, a loner with an obsession for pornography who lies about his relationship with Kate, and whose sailing boat is moored just yards away from where the toddler is found.
As the investigation proceeds, attention shifts inexorably towards the murdered woman's husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And is Kate the 'respectable woman' he claims her to be? And why does their daughter scream every time he tries to pick her up?