West Yorkshire, 1885. In the blackened mill town of Keighley, Lena Starkie finds out she is pregnant. Barred from marrying her lover, and certain she will be ostracised by the local community, she flees to London.
Entering an East End rife with vice and riddled with doss houses, Lena is preyed upon by Mrs K, landlady of The Red Lion public house on the notorious Ratcliffe Highway. Here she meets Marie, an enigmatic woman with a secret past who is determined to conceal her true identity.
Three years later, summer looms and Lena is tormented by premonitions of a clear-eyed man.
Marie reappears as Mary, and the two friends find themselves at a crossroads as the Whitechapel Murders commence, placing them directly in the path of the killer known as Jack the Ripper.