On a whim Alice Raikes takes a train to Edinburgh to see her family. She has only been there a few minutes when she sees something which she finds so upsetting that she immediately boards the train back to Kings Cross. Within hours she is hit by a car in London traffic and is taken to hospital in a coma. Was this an accident or a suicide attempt? What was it that she saw in Edinburgh that so upset her? Her family gathers at her bedside as Alice drifts through varying levels of consciousness and her story is revealed in a series of flashbacks.