1957 in London. Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and - on the brink of forty. When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more she investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys ... A gentle novel about love and loneliness set in the 1950s.