In the stifling heat wave of June 1976, an American plane crashes on the Cambridgeshire Fens, the point of impact the remote Black Bank Farm. Out of the flames walks a young woman, Maggie Beck, clutching a baby in her arms. Twenty-seven years later, Maggie is dying. Journalist Philip Dryden knows this because Maggie is lying in the hospital ward next to his wife Laura. As Maggie prepares to leave this world, Laura—-locked in a coma for four years—-appears to be slowly returning to it. And for the last few days, she has listened to Maggie's death-bed confession surrounding events on the night of the crash all those years ago. It's a confession that will blow open the murder story that Dryden is covering. But can Laura somehow communicate to her husband the shocking secrets she has learned?