When Alice Kegby threw her only daughter Lauren out of the Kegby family’s ancestral home, it was for ever. The girl was not just an embarrassment, she was a criminal, a blot on the family name.

But now, four years later, Lauren is back looking for reconciliation and forgiveness.

She is expecting confrontation: Alice Kegby’s acid-tongued tyranny and pathological ill-temper are legendary — the world-famous author of dozens of best-selling romantic novels, Alice is the polar opposite of the heroines adorning book after successful book.

What she is not expecting is uncompromising rejection bordering on hysteria — a wild irrationality that is new, even allowing for Alice’s intransigence.

What has happened to her mother in the years she has been away? Lauren is determined to find out. And the deeper she digs, the more shocking the truth becomes.

For like her late father Maurice before her, Alice Kegby has her secrets, dark secrets to be hidden away and shared with no one.