Alice Raikes boards a train at King's Cross to visit her sisters in Scotland. Hours later, she steps into traffic on a busy London road and is taken to hospital in a coma. Who or what did she see in Edinburgh that made her return to London so suddenly? Was the accident a suicide attempt? And what exactly do her family, waiting at her bedside, have to hide? Sliding between different levels of consciousness, Alice listens to the conversations around her, and begins sifting through recollections of her past and a recently curtailed love affair.