As a child, Hannah Lethbridge is persistently abused by her self-centred mother. She is assaulted and cheated by a perverted tutor, and eventually collapses dramatically in her doctor's waiting room. Only after three years' therapeutic care can she recover her shattered self-confidence sufficiently to negotiate a job with an Edinburgh publisher, and eventually a teaching post in the University of Dundee. There, slowly, she meets and falls deeply in love with an introverted scientist. Her former life, which had wounded her so deeply, is almost forgotten, until her criminal mother appears unannounced on her doorstep, and Hannah's world is shattered once again. This time, however, she has the support of her lover and her friends, the police and the justice to be found in the courtrooms of the Old Bailey.