Psychologist Kit Quinn is a young woman doing a dangerous job. She inhabits a world of gruesome crime scenes, tense interrogations and violent insanity. On returning to work after a brutal attack, she is asked by the police to advise them on an apparently simple murder inquiry. The body of a young woman has been found by a London canal. The prime suspect is the man who attacked and scarred Kit.

Samantha Laschen, a doctor specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, has moved to the Essex Coast with her small daughter, Elsie, to escape the problems of her London life, or so she thinks. Fiona McKenzie barely survived the savage, murderous attack which left her parents dead. Now she is in need of sanctuary and the police see Sam as the ideal person to offer her a safe house. Already overburdened with the demands of a new job and her mercurial lover Danny, Sam reluctantly agrees to take her in. But as Fiona makes her way into the hearts of her hosts, Sam discovers that the risks she has foreseen are nothing compared to the terrifying danger she actually faces.

When Miranda Cotton returns from work to find her new boyfriend Brendan, reading her diary, she breaks off the relationship and throws him out of her flat. Getting Brendan out of her life, however, is not so easy. Two weeks later her sister Kerry phones in ecstasy. She's in love. She has a new boyfriend. He's called Brendan......