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Anna Mercer, thirty-eight, returns to the small Midlands town where she grew up after her mother, Rose, falls from a step ladder and fractures her wrist. Anna has recently separated from her husband, though she has told almost nobody at home. She intends to stay only long enough to help Rose manage the house and arrange some temporary support.
The family home is full of half-finished repairs left by Anna's father, Tom, who died twelve years earlier. Rose has never changed much since his death. Daniel, Anna's older brother, lives nearby and runs the hardware shop Tom founded. He insists that Rose is perfectly capable and that Anna is overreacting.
While clearing the loft to find an old suitcase, Anna discovers a parcel of letters wrapped in a tea towel and sealed inside a biscuit tin. The letters were written to Tom over a period of several years by a woman named Catherine Vale. Their tone moves from affectionate to angry, then desperate. Several references imply that Catherine had a daughter Tom knew about.
Anna is disturbed less by the possibility of an affair than by the realisation that both her parents may have concealed an entire person from her and Daniel. She takes the letters to Leah Harper, her closest childhood friend, who now edits the local community newsletter and occasionally works freelance for the regional paper. Leah warns Anna that family papers can easily be misread, but she helps establish that Catherine once lived in a nearby village.
Daniel reacts badly when Anna tells him. He argues that their father is dead and Rose is recovering, so no good can come from digging up old accusations. His defensiveness makes Anna suspicious that he may know more than he admits.
Anna begins searching local records and finds a Catherine Vale who moved away twenty-four years earlier. She also finds the name Megan Vale, now twenty-four and living in Nottingham. Anna contacts Megan under the pretence of asking about Catherine's former address.
At the same time, Anna's stay at home becomes more complicated. Rose repeatedly avoids discussing Tom, and mother and daughter fall into their old pattern: Anna asks practical questions, Rose answers a different one, and both behave as though nothing important has been said.
Leah's subplot emerges when she reveals that her own mother once worked with Tom and Catherine at a local building-supplies company. Leah remembers overhearing adults argue about Catherine when they were teenagers, but she has never understood the context. Her discovery could become crucial, but this strand is initially left hanging for several chapters while Anna focuses on Megan.
Anna meets Megan in a café. Megan knows Catherine had been involved with a married man but does not know his name. Catherine died three years earlier. Megan has always believed her father abandoned them before she was born.
Anna notices that Megan resembles Daniel rather than herself. This observation becomes too heavily emphasised in the draft, making Anna spell out possibilities the reader has already begun to infer.
Back home, Daniel finally admits that he found one of Catherine's letters after Tom died. He confronted Rose, who told him that Catherine had tried to break up their marriage and that Tom had ended the relationship before Megan was born. Daniel chose not to tell Anna because he thought the truth could only hurt Rose.
Anna is furious, not only at the secrecy but at Daniel's assumption that he could decide what she was entitled to know. Their argument becomes the novel's sharpest sibling scene.
Leah later uncovers an old photograph showing Tom, Catherine and Rose together at a company Christmas event. More importantly, Leah's mother remembers that Catherine was briefly engaged to another man at the time Megan was conceived. This complicates the assumption that Tom was Megan's father.
Anna confronts Rose with the letters. Rose initially refuses to discuss them, then finally admits that Tom and Catherine had an affair. Tom believed for years that Megan might be his daughter. Rose knew.
The central revelation is that Rose was the person who eventually insisted Tom should contact Catherine and offer financial support if Megan was his. Catherine refused. Years later, after a private paternity test arranged through lawyers when Megan was a toddler, Tom learned he was not Megan's biological father.
Rose kept the letters because she could not bring herself to destroy them, but she also could not bear to explain a period in which her marriage nearly ended. Tom wanted to tell Anna and Daniel when they were adults. Rose repeatedly asked him not to.
Anna is angry that Rose allowed the family to live inside a simplified version of Tom as loyal husband and dependable father. Rose responds that protecting children from adult failure is not the same as lying forever, but admits that somewhere along the way protection became avoidance.