There were four of them- young women, dressed decorously in black, employed at an exclusive jewellery store in the 1960s. Close friendships were forged as Natasha, Prudence, Rachel and Maisie worked together under the benevolent rule of the two Markham brothers. Years later Natasha, newly divorced and back from America with a fifteen-year-old daughter, decides there must be a reunion. Pru, always the mysterious one, unexpectedly offers Prospect House, a property she has inherited in the Malvern Hills where they may all forgather. Rachel, married to her former boss, a Liberal MP, gladly leaves a tangled domestic situation to join the friends she hasn't seen for so long. And Maisie...Maisie, perhaps the most vulnerable of the four, mother of five children, wife of the unpredictable Edward, fails to arrive at Prospect House. The drama of her disappearance has a far-reaching effect on the lives and destinies of them all.