The year is 2002. A woman sits in a high, beautiful Cornish garden in startling sunlight preparing to paint a scene of the town and harbour below. She is prompted to recall events of twenty years ago when she had sat in a coroners court in Luton following a fatal accident that changed the course of her life and those closest to her. That memory then triggers earlier events in her life and her mind is transported back still further, back to 1969, where we find her and her best friend, Ruby, who to the six year old is already worldly-wise being a whole year and a bit older at the age of eight. As the two children grow into adolescence and then adulthood, their lives take on unpredicted twists and turns that they could never have expected or planned for. In both their stories the realisation is that, sometimes, life just happens.