The novel is set in 1957, in the southeast suburbs of London. Its main heroine, Jean Swinny, is around forty. She works for a local newspaper and lives with her mother, who constantly bossers her around. Suddenly, a strange letter arrives at the offices of the “Echo of North Kent.” In it, a woman named Gretchen—apparently a foreigner—states that she has reason to believe her own daughter, who at that time is ten years old, was born without any involvement of a man. Jean volunteers to look into the case of “the Virgin of Sidcup” and goes to meet Gretchen. And that meeting, completely unexpectedly, will overturn the lives of all the participants in this mysterious story—and above all, her own.