Twenty-nine-year-old Sylvie is about to meet her father again after thirteen years apart and ask him to give her away at her wedding. Although she has a promising career as a photographer and a steady, secure relationship with her fiance Jack, Sylvie feels restless and unsettled and, as she prepares for the reunion with her father, her thoughts turn increasingly to their final, fateful summer together when she was twelve, and her visit to his commune just outside Florence. The events of that holiday cast their long shadow over her teenage years, and now threaten her happiness as an adult. In deft and compelling prose, Lily Dunn tells the parallel stories of Sylvie's present and past: the anxious week in London waiting for her father, and the summer in Italy that started so promisingly, but ended with such betrayal and loss of innocence.