When ten-year-old Dina and her best friend Kate are unexpectedly whisked from the relative safety of the orphan home to a factory indenture, Dina promises to protect her friend from their imperious matron and hostile co-workers. It is a promise that she cannot keep, and in a revenge-driven midnight siege, Kate is tragically killed. In despair, Dina escapes to the depraved streets of Victorian London's East End.
Canny and resilient, she must learn quickly how to fend for herself, filching food and finding shelter where she can. Before long, her life takes another, more perilous turn when she is plucked from the streets by a volatile cracksman and his gang, to assist them in their high-end burglaries. She must use her every skill, and learn new ones, to survive Ian Brown's often violent keeping and the work she must do. All the while, she must also avoid capture by the man hired to return her to her indenture; someone known to Mr Brown through still darker circumstances, and someone who could prove as dangerous to her as her keeper.