When a naive encounter at a Coronation party leaves 16-year-old Janet Slater pregnant there's no question in her scandalised parents' minds of her keeping the baby. Bundled off to a home for unmarried mothers in South London, Janet is about to face the hardest moment of her sheltered life alone. Forced to give her tiny daughter up for adoption, Janet promises her that one day, come what may, she'll find her ... In the years that follow it seems, however...

Marina is adopted. She's always known this - but the circumstances of her birth remain a mystery. Baby Blue, the newspapers nicknamed her at the time, after she'd been found wrapped in a blue shawl, in the hallway of a large, shared house in London. 24 Harrington Gardens. That was the house. And it's still standing now Marina is an adult; still split into flats. And one of them is to let. Of course, Marina knows that the chances of her uncovering...

On Christmas morning, in the unforgiving harshness of a convent in Galway, Kitty Doherty gives birth to a baby, who is immediately taken away for adoption in America. But Kitty's life is hanging by a thread, her only hope a dangerous journey through the ice and snow to Ballymara and her Irish family.