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Photographer Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. Amongst his papers she finds an intriguing letter written ten years before, from a woman, Beatrice Marlow, begging to meet him to disclose important family information. Some months later Lucy finds herself on holiday in Cornwall. She visits her father's childhood home, the once-beautiful Carlyon Manor, and tracks down the letter-writer. Beatrice, now an old woman, has an extraordinary story to tell. Growing up in the 1930s, Beatrice played with the children of Carlyon Manor - especially pretty, blonde Angelina Wincanton, who was Lucy's grandmother. The Wincantons are a glamorous but unconventional family. The four Wincanton children bear the brunt of their parents' unhappiness, and Beatrice is much valued as a steadying influence. There comes a summer when the Wincantons are away, that Beatrice, now fifteen, falls in love with a young visitor to the town: Rafe Ashton, whom she rescues from the sea when his boat is caught up in a storm. The dark clouds of war are gathering and Beatrice, Rafe, and the Wincantons will all be swept up in the cataclysm of events that follows. It's a story that will take Beatrice from Cornwall to London, and France; a powerful tale of courage and betrayal in which friendship and true love are tested to the utmost, with ramifications reaching down the generations. For as Lucy listens to Beatrice's story, she learns a secret that will change everything.