Rose Bradshaw was brought up a stone’s throw from Blackpool’s bustling promenade. She had her mother’s looks and her father’s passion – an intimidating combination, and she worked on the same racetrack as her father, one of the town’s best-known bookies.
When the rapacious, wealthy and childless Widow Hettie Miller took her in hand, a new glamorous Rose moved up the social scale. But Rose was unaware that Hettie had her own devious reasons for wanting to manipulate her life. On finding that Lester, the man Rose had always loved, had married, Rose allows herself to be guided by Hettie and soon falls in love and marries Stuart Fallow. But she cannot forget the ambitious lad across the street.
Then comes World War II and lives get disrupted. Stuart and Hettie become ever more controlling and stop Rose from going back to the racetrack. But when Rose finds that Lester is back on home leave, suddenly their world erupts and the stakes become one of life and death, with Rose risking everything, even her life, for the man she has always loved.