When Dodie Blackstock, only child of multi-millionaire Wolf Blackstock, is told that her mother¿s body has been found in a housing estate in Hackney, she is shocked. When she is told that her mother, Susan, has been dead for less than 48 hours, she is devastated. For Susan was kidnapped, apparently by a politically motivated group, when Dodie was nine. Susan was never found, and she was presumed dead.

Traumatised by her lonely childhood, Dodie has been estranged from her dysfunctional and complicated family for years. She returns to Camoys Hall, the Blackstock¿s stately home, to talk to her step-mother Joan, who lives there by herself. But when she arrives, she discovers that Joan, surprised by an intruder, has had a fatal heart attack. Alone with her memories in the big house, Dodie must come to terms with the anger she still feels for her father whose vast fortune she has now inherited. She must make up her mind whether she can trust Jimmy, the local boy who appears to have her best interests at heart. Most importantly she must find out who it is who is sending her anonymous and threatening letters; who it is who¿s waiting in the darkness outside Camoys Hall, watching her every move ¿