Merham is a well-ordered 1950s seaside town: the kind of town in which everyone knows their place. Lottie Swift, an evacuee who has grown up with the respectable Holden family, loves Merham, while the Holdens daughter Celia chafes against the constraints of the town. When a group of bohemians takes over Arcadia, a stark Art Deco house on the seafront, the girls are as drawn to its temptations which set in place a chain of tragic events.Now, almost fifty years on, the time has come to ask: can you ever leave your past behind?