When sixteen-year-old Joyce Savigear absconds from work to go out with a man she barely knows, she hopes a new, exciting life is just beginning.

But, two years later, she is waiting on a railway station in the tranquil English countryside. It's the summer of 1952 and she and her younger brother Charlie have just been released from borstal. Another fresh start awaits - but can Joyce ever outrun the darkness of her past?