Martin Waring is the curator of the Ulster Museum in Belfast. He is married to Alison and they have two children Rachel and Tom. Rachel is the apple of her father's eye and he is overjoyed when he learns that his daughter has acquired 10 top grades, ten stars, and is destined to be accepted into one of the great institutions of learning....Oxford or Cambridge beckons. One night both Martin and his daughter make wrong decisions the outcome of which alters their lives, in a way that I as a reader did not see, and what follows is both harrowing and heart-wrenching in equal measures.