Beautiful, bright and ambitious, Natalie is stuck in a dead end job, living her life through wild weekend, yearning for something more. When she sees a chance to change her life, she takes it. After all, its only a minor crime. Nobody will be hurt, will they? But Colin gets hurt. He's the man who Natalie marries.

Take an ordinary, well-off family like the Prices. Watch what happens when one Sunday seventeen-year-old Hannah disappears without a trace. See how the family rallies when a ransom note demands half a million pounds for Hannah's safe return. But it's when Hannah comes home that the story really begins. Now observe what happens to a family when they lose their house, their status, all their wealth. Note how they disintegrate under the pressures of guilt and poverty and are forced to confront their true selves. And, finally, wait to hear about Hannah, who has the most shocking surprise in store...

Laura - a student, a beauty, as vital and rebellious as her parents could ever have feared for. As children they had shared everything - so much so that later, neither sister could quite remember to which one of them some long-distant adventure had happened.

Petra's love life is a bit of a car-crash, even in her sixties. But then she falls for Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The catch? Jeremy is her best friend's husband. And just as Petra is beginning to relax into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, and to Bev, her best friend who she's been betraying.