Marilyn Howe and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo, until one night Kathleen doesn't come home. Fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep, so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes' dark and cluttered kitchen, they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more. And for the second time, he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland. Then a woman's body is washed up on the beach.