One young woman dares to dream of a better life . . . One freezing night in the 1930s, a baby is left to die in a public lavatory in Sunderland. But against the odds she survives. Sarah Brown is from sturdy stock, and she needs to be, for the orphanage where she grows up is run with brutal efficiency by child-hating Matron Cox. Only Sarah dares to defy her - with horrific consequences. Emerging from the Home as a beautiful and determined young woman, Sarah takes up a post in London as a housekeeper. She's more than capable of dealing with her employer's son, who has a penchant for young servants. And when she meets again Rodney Mallard, the young doctor who tended her after a beating in the Home, Sarah begins to dream of a better future. But serpents lurk in every paradise. And Sarah won't be completely happy until she knows why she was abandoned by her mother, the one person who should have loved her more than life itself . . .