1970s London. Ralph, an up-and-coming composer, has gone to visit Edmund Greenslay in his riverside home. At the heart of the house's wild bliss he finds Edmund's nine-year-old daughter Daphne, flitting, sprite-like, through the house's colourful rooms and unruly garden. From the moment their lives collide Ralph is consumed by an obsession to make Daphne his. Decades later, Daphne watches her own daughter come of age and is confronted with the truth of her own childhood - and a devastating act of violence that has lain hidden for decades.