Jack Coates has settled for the humdrum life of an auction house valuer. He's in his mid-forties, widowed and reconciled to a quiet life. Until, that is, his boss decides that he needs help on his latest assignment. Cate is his boss's niece, running from an unhappy affair and hiding in London. Not a match made in heaven. The assignment is to catalogue the contents of a large, country house on the coast and prepare them for auction. But it turns out to be more complicated than anyone imagines. Has Cate run far enough? Is Jack still mourning his dead wife? What secrets are they each hiding?
Behind their story we learn about the family that lived in the big house during the Roaring Twenties and 1930s through a series of letters written by the youngest sister, nicknamed Baby, of the house to her older, married sister. Baby disappeared in 1941 and the mystery has never been solved.
As the story of the family begins to obsess Cate, she researches them to try to discover more about their secrets. In the process, her own begin to come to light. How she resolves both is the substance of this story.
There's an underlying purpose to this story that I won't disclose for fear of spoiling the ending for readers but this novel has a neat twist at the end. Gently worded, cleverly interweaving past and present, this story kept me interested right through to the end. For fans of mysteries, love stories and honest story telling, this is one for you.
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