In this contemporary Gothic, two women are forced to face the dark secrets of their own pasts due to a sinister discovery in a dilapidated Edinburgh boarding house.

The case is unexceptional, that is what I know. A house full of stuff left behind by a dead woman, abandoned at the last . . .

When trauma cleaner Essie Pound makes a gruesome discovery in the derelict Edinburgh boarding house she is sent to clean, it brings her into contact with a young policewoman, Emily Noble, who has her own reasons to solve the case.

As the two women embark on a journey into the heart of a forgotten family, the investigation prompts fragmented memories of their own traumatic histories - something Emily has spent a lifetime attempting to bury, and Essie a lifetime trying to lay bare.