From the outside, Violet seems to lead an ordinary and uneventful existence - single, working in a shop, and living with her parents in rural Kent - but her life has already been touched by tragedy. At 21, Violet is a young widow, and the couple she lives with, Harvey and Laura Blackwood, are not her own parents but those of her late husband, Jonathan. Rocked by grief, Violet has shut herself away from the world, but she soon finds that she cannot escape reality. When Max Croft, an old friend of Jonathan's, enters her life, she is faced not only with the possibility of a new attraction, but with the knowledge that there are secrets behind her husband's death that she has not yet uncovered, and which threaten to shake her faith in everything she knows about their past life together.