When Dinah was 19, Gilbert was a sort of fairy prince. She had loved him madly but gradually she had begun to realize that he was not quite so wonderful. Despite keeping her eyes firmly shut, her heart had known there was something wrong. When Gilbert is killed in a flying accident, she is left with four children to raise. Life is hard, fighting back loneliness and eking out a meager pension. But when her brother Dan, newly demobbed from the Navy, arrives to whisk them away to the seaside, Dinah can at last find peace - and, when she least expects it, love.