At her dying mother's request, Lily Penrose promises to do all she can to look after her sister and brothers and see that the family stays together. After all, with her sweetheart dead in the Great War, it is not as if she expects to marry. But managing on her twin brother's salary and the few pounds she can earn working in a bookshop is desperately hard, and when their landlord gives the Penroses notice to quit their modest Bristol home Lily is at her wit's end.Salvation is offered in the unlikely shape of coal merchant Harry Coney. Despite being many years her senior, he promises a home for her and her family if she agrees to marry him. But it is only when Lily has become his wife that she realises the price she is expected to pay. When her new husband's true nature is revealed, Lily flees from both Harry and the law and escapes to the seaside haven of Torquay to begin a new life. There she meets two men who help her to rebuild her shattered confidence. Yet, haunted by the baleful shadow of Harry Coney, Lily finds herself unsure whether her troubles are at an end - or just beginning...