When she was fifteen Jane Standen lost the five-year old girl she was taking care of and the child was never found. Years later, Jane is working as an archivist at a local museum in contemporary London which is about to close due to lack of funding. As her last project she searches for information related to a woman who disappeared about 125 years ago from a Victorian asylum. The story moves between the museum, the Victorian asylum and the wooded estate around a country house that seems to connect both time periods.