The ones you leave behind are the ones that stay with you forever...

When Madeleine Belfield loses her family and her home in the Blitz, she is sent to love with relatives in the relative safety of the Yorkshire Dales.

On board the steam train Maddy befriends Gloria Conley and her brother Sid, abandoned by their desperate mother. Although Maddy and Gloria are chalk and cheese, they soon vow to be 'forever friends'.

Maddy slowly adjusts to Brooklyn Hall and her new family, especially Aunt Plum. Eager to help with the war effort, Plum has opened up a home for 'difficult' evacuees and Maddy and Gloria quickly become bound together in friendship and mischief with a motley crew, including headstrong Greg and flighty Enid.

The friendship endures into adulthood, until a tragic experience tears them apart. Desperate to escape her memories, Maddy flees to London.

Years later, chance reunites her with Gloria and Greg. But a visit back to Yorkshire reveals the truth about the past - a revelation with unimaginable consequences.