Bernie Ingram is forty-nine, menopausal, lonely. Married since the age of eighteen, with no close friends and few family ties, she feels as if the past thirty years of her life have been sacrificed to others: to her husband Martin, who still carries a torch for a one-night stand at university; to her son Dante, whose affection seems largely directed towards his maternal grandmother; to her boss Salena, who runs a struggling bookshop in East Finchley. Bernie's own ambitions and dreams have been forgotten by everyone - including Bernie herself, who feels herself growing less visible, less surprising, less lovable, with every passing day. Until the murder of a woman in a local park unlocks a series of childhood memories - and with them, a power that she has suppressed for all her adult life.