Each summer a group of families would holiday together in Cornwall. St. Ives was the perfect escape, a quiet, attractive village, until one day in 1972. That was the day a hotel porter was fatally poisoned and a body washed ashore...

The events of August 1972--a poisoning, a drowning and a possible cover-up--disturb the 17-year-old Grant Morrison. Forty years later, still obsessed with the case and the fear that his late mother might have been involved, Grant sets out to unravel the twisted network of the suspects' relationships while haunted by an old nursery rhyme sung by the echoing voice of a child.