Liam is every inch a teenager, busking quietly on a street in Cambridge, when a wealthy woman befriends him, daring to hope that he is the son who vanished off a Norfolk beach twelve years ago. Laura Principal is brought in to settle the question of identity. Is this beautiful youth really the lost child, or is he an interloper? As Laura searches for the truth in this chilling story of identity, devotion and death, she finds herself face to face with a loss that threatens to turn her own world upside down ...