After a recent split with her boyfriend, Dave Ledgard, romance writer Jenny Clarke finds herself living in a narrow boat on the canal in Hebden Bridge, a small market town in West Yorkshire. A chance meeting with the delectable Andy Valentine sparks a close friendship, and he confides in her that many years before, his daughter, Susie, aged four, had disappeared from her day nursery without a trace. Long buried memories of her school work experience at the very same nursery surface at the forefront of Jenny’s mind as, with the help of a hypnotist and the reappearance of a family of gypsies camping in a field behind her daughter’s house, she and Andy set out on a quest to find Susie.

Despite a very bad case of writer’s block, which is slowing down the completion of her latest novel, and constant harassment from her ex-boyfriend, who is now living in New York, Jenny helps Andy painstakingly unravel the past a tiny bit at a time bringing them ever closer and closer together. With setbacks at every corner, will Jenny and Andy overcome these to reunite Andy and his missing daughter, Susie Valentine, and perhaps find an enduring romance in the process?