Sadie's life is calm and complete. She is a mother, a good friend and the robust survivor of a marriage she deliberately left behind. She has come to believe that she has everything she wants – or deserves. But now her father is dying: the vital, elusive man who spent his life creating perfumes for other women is slipping away from her. When she realises that she can never make her peace with him, Sadie begins to look back over her childhood. In pursuing his separate life, Sadie's father ignored her, subjecting her to succession of 'aunties', leaving her loveless and alone. As Sadie confronts the truth about her father, her relationship with her son Jack appears to be breaking down and she is intent on saving it. Then the arrival of one of those fleeting women from her father's past starts a train of events that even Sadie cannot control ...