It is 1881 and all is sunny and well in the life of Sally Lockhart. Her friends Jim Taylor and Webster Gorland are away travelling the world, but Sally lives with her darling baby daughter Harriet in a fine house in Twickenham with servants and a thriving business as a financial consultant. Life has never been so good. Unbeknownst to Sally everything is about to change. She will soon need every ounce of her courage, every fibre of her moral being and all her native wit and resolution. She will be utterly alone. She is about to learn at dangerously close quarters all about the tiger in the well.