For seventeen-year-old Brid Stevens, the day began with such promise. At four o'clock on a summer morning, her alarm clock roused her from a dream-filled sleep. She had an appointment to keep with Joe Lloyd whom she had met at the weekly dance. On the cliff-top at Stockwell Hill, overlooking the sea, they were to watch the sun come up.

But upon her return home, where she lived with her parents and her brother, all hell was let loose. Harry Palmer was also there, fresh from telling his tale of the lovers’ tryst he said he had witnessed. Brid and Joe, he claimed, had spent the night together, there on the cliff-top. What was to occur after that would bring the day to a horrifying end, as family and friends of all concerned displayed their prejudices and made their own judgements.

The events of this powerful novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a period during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself.