I was a glutton for my mother's life, she tells me. Nestled there inside her I took hold and sucked the very blood from her.
Ivy is a picture researcher drawn to images of the world beneath the skin. As her obsession with anatomical photographs grows, so her story comes out, coloured always by the moods and longings of June, her mother.
Throughout her childhood Ivy is punished for the theft of her mother's life. Then Victor arrives suddenly one suburban Sydney summer, and stays, bringing with him the possibility of a father - but also the terrible danger that he might discover June and Ivy's secret.
Twenty years later, when Ivy is uneasily married to Linford, she searches out Victor. In his house by the beach, past and present collide.
