Meet Lisa Grant, turning 40 - broke and alone and living in rural Gloucestershire. To avoid a midlife crisis, she addresses the problem that has been with her for the past 40 years: her rocky relationship with her narcissistic mother, Elizabeth.

When Lisa Grant is six-years-old, her father disappeared from the family home and her mother, Elizabeth, kept the scandalous truth about him hidden.

At the start of her journalistic career, Lisa reconnects with her father, now living in Portugal and discovers the grim truth about her narcissistic and controlling mother.

Lisa falls in love with her best friend's brother, Jack, who pops the question in Paris, but she can't just say it. She cannot say the words 'I love you,' and he decides to put the Atlantic Ocean between them.

Lisa spends the next eighteen years unsuccessfully trying to forget about Jack while flitting in and out of relationships that don't demand any commitment.

Turning forty, she blames her mother for her emotional impotence and, for her sanity, she needs to address the situation with her mother. Believing a childhood trauma may be responsible for her mother's total lack of empathy, she harnesses her journalistic skills to investigate her mother's past and is shocked by what she finds.