Although Fleur Sylvester hasn't had the best start in life - a mixed race baby abandoned by her middle-class mother and would-be rock star father - she is brought up surrounded by her grandparents' love in London's East End. But when they die, her life is changed completely. At only nineteen, Fleur is left with nothing but a scrap of paper that bears her mother's last address, surely many years out of date. With no real hope of finding her mother, she decides that the small town of Elvemere may be as good a place as any to start again. She starts her new life, with new lodgings and a new job. Then one day her work brings her face to face with the woman who abandoned her as a baby,and appeared never to give her another thought: her loving mother...