Gemma Goodeve is travelling to London for an audition for a West End play when her train is involved in a head-on collision. There is great loss of life and Gemma herself has to have her lower leg amputated before she can be freed from the wreckage. A young intern, Nick Quenall, performs the operation while his GP father, Andrew, speaks out angrily to the cameras claiming that this was an accident waiting to happen. When Gemma wakes from the anaesthetic she not only has to contend with her ambitious mothers disappointment at the end of her career, but with a media circus. The Quenall family take Gemma in to protect her-but is this really what Gemma wants?