I have given up so much and done so many terrible things already for the sake of my family that I can only keep going. I do not know what is going to happen to us. I am frightened, but I feel strong. I have the strength of a woman who has everything to lose. In the sweltering summer of 1997, strait-laced, straight-A student Karen met Biba – a bohemian and impossibly glamorous aspiring actress. She is quickly drawn into her new friend's carefree world of constant parties, and quickly abandons her old life to move into the crumbling Highgate mansion Biba shares with her brother Rex and a stream of lodgers. For a while, life was one long summer of love. But every summer must end. By the end of theirs, two people were dead – and now Karen's past has come back to haunt her ...