When Sarah Fortune, with her impeccable qualifications and chequered history, is sent to a small seaside town in Norfolk, she goes willingly. Sorting out the inheritance problems of the Pardoes, Merton-on-Sea's premier family, promises to distance her from a claustrophobic ralationship with Malcolm Cook. Sarah cannot bear to be a captive. But she soon discovers that guilt, insecurity, unrequited love and a touch of insanity afflict the Pardoes and the town, the legacy of a suicide which took place two years before, when Elizabeth Tysall, a beautiful woman with an uncanny resemblance to Sarah herself, walked into the sea and never came back.