She is adopted by foster parents and thirty years later marries Adam, a consultant neonatologist dealing with premature babies.

Prologue The story opens with Rebecca and Ruby walking along the coast road from St Just to Zennor in Cornwall.

Part One – Shoebox Story Rebecca recounts the discovery of herself as a foundling by Lucia, after she is abandoned by her young mother outside an Italian restaurant.

This is at a time when she is working for Mr Damiano, a mysterious ex-circus owner who has set up a chain of boutique hotels that Rebecca helps to manage.

Rebecca’s story goes back to the time when she was sharing a flat with Joe, an intellectual who is writing a book about Nadezhda Alliluyeva, the thirty-one-year-old wife of Stalin who committed suicide in 1932.

On their return to England, they decide to visit Adam’s grandmother’s grave at Barnoon Cemetery in Cornwall and Rebecca is happy that Ruby will have ancestors that she herself can never have.

Adam visits Rebecca in her boarding house and they become reunited and return to Ruby who is buried in the same grave as her great grandmother.