Not all scars are visible. Jonathan Kellaway needs no reminding of that on the verge of his retirement from china clay conglomerate Intercontinental Kaolins. The company has left its mark in pits and spoil heaps around the world. But it has also left a no less enduring mark on some of those who have worked for it, Kellaway included. Its past, as well as its future, is a treacherous place. So Kellaway is surprised when IK’s founder and former chairman, Greville Lashley, sets him a final task before he quits. The academic hired by the board to write the company’s history has discovered a gap covering several years in the records of the small Cornish china clay outfit Lashley started with and where Kellaway also began his career. He is despatched to Cornwall to learn what has become of the missing documents.

But the search is a voyage into dangerous waters. A dead friend, a lost lover and a clutch of mysteries. All of them from Kellaway’s youth in Cornwall and Italy in the late 1960s come back to haunt him. The hope that he may at last learn the truth about the tragedies and misfortunes that blighted those years. It is a truth that has claimed several victims before. If he pursues it hard and long enough, he may only add himself to the list.