Julia Almond believes she is special and dreams of a more exciting and glamorous life away from the drab suburbia of her upbringing. Her work in a fashionable boutique in the West End gives her the personal freedom that she craves but escape from her parental home into marriage soon leads to boredom and frustration. She begins a passionate affair with a younger man, which has deadly consequences. Based on the events of a sensational murder trial in the 1920s - the Thompson/Bywaters case - Julia becomes trapped by her sex and class in a criminal justice system in which she has no control. Julia finds herself the victim of society's expectations of lower-middle-class female behaviour and incriminated by her own words. Tennyson Jesse creates a flawed, doomed heroine in a novel of creeping unease that continues to haunt long after the last page is turned.