It’s 1935 and Maggie Ross loves her life among the stallholders in Kelvin Market where her husband Tony has a bric-a-brac stall and where she lives, with her young family, above Mr. Goldman’s bespoke tailors. But when one fine Spring day her husband disappears into thin air her world collapses.

The last anyone saw of Tony is at Rotherhithe station, where Mr. Goldman glimpsed him boarding a train, though Maggie can only guess at her husband’s destination. And she has no way of telling what prompted him to leave her so suddenly—especially when she’s got a new baby on the way. What she can tell is who her real friends are as she struggles to bring her children up alone. There’s outspoken, golden-hearted Winnie, her fellow stallholder whose cheerful chatter hides a sad past, and cheeky Eve whom she's known since they were girls. And there’s also Inspector Matthews, the policeman sent to investigate her husband’s disappearance, a man who, to the Kelvin Market stallholders, is on the wrong side of the law, a man to whom Maggie is increasingly drawn.