Beatrice, a young woman in flight from a homeland that condemned her for daring to love, shields her sorrow from the indifference of her adopted city, and navigates a night-time world of shift-work and bedsits.
Howard Pink, self-made billionaire, is a man who has risen from Petticoat Lane to the mansions of Kensington on a tide of determination and bluster, and yet he still feels the wolves of self-doubt snapping at his heels, and the terrible loss that has shaken him to his foundations.
Carol, skating tentatively around the hole in her life that her husband's death has left, fights sleeplessness and frets over her daughter's prospects. And Esme, a young journalist learning to muck-rake and doorstep in pursuit of the elusive by-line, longs to sound the depths of her own worth and leave her imprint on the world.
Four strangers, each inhabiting the same city where the gulf between those who have too much, and those who will never have enough, seems impossibly vast. But when the glass that separates Howard's and Beatrice's worlds is shattered by an inexcusable act, they discover that the capital has connected them in ways they could never have imagined. They come to learn that shame and absolution can go hand in hand, grief can bind as well as sunder, and love can surprise us all.
