As dawn breaks in the sleepy market town of Southcliffe, the unmistakable sound of gunshots ring out. The residents of this tight-knit community wake to discover an inconceivable horror has devastated the town, and the lives of those left behind are changed forever. Questions, guilt and ghosts from the past are unleashed as the residents of Southcliffe resilience is tested, both as individuals and as a community. Reporter David Whitehead, a journalist who grew up in Southcliffe, finds himself back there looking for answers from the shattered community while trying to reconcile dark events from his own past.

The deceits, the longings and desires of the people of Southcliffe are revealed in the days leading up to the shooting. Betrayal comes casually to Paul who barely hides his affair with a much younger woman despite having a newborn baby with his loyal wife. Caring comes naturally to Claire but her efforts at work are becoming exhausted by pressures at home. She and her husband, Andrew are worried about the void that will be left behind when their only child, Anna leaves home to go abroad. For all of these people life turns in a second. Each is forced through their loss to come to terms with how easily they took their loved ones for granted. But the reality of grief has not yet fully descended on them. Reporter David is haunted by childhood memories of his hometown and is reluctant to return to Southcliffe. His own experience growing up there gives him a version of events which is dangerously subjective.

As the onset of trauma ravages Southcliffe the families of the dead are each immersed in their own struggle to comprehend the fallout. Grief isolates them from themselves, their loved ones and the community. Each succumbs to their own private madness. For some of them, there will be no return. David's secret about his childhood friendship with Morton is beginning to take hold of him. His marriage is falling apart. His job is on the line as he becomes insistent on finding an answer to why this happened. The more he imposes his own explanation, the more the residents reject it. Conspiracy theories surrounding police cover-ups feed into David's personal paranoia.

One year on - an anonymous letter sent to David reawakens the threat that Morton is still alive and returning to Southcliffe. Now living alone in a bedsit, David takes the letter as a sign to revisit his hometown and confront his past. He finds a town that is just the same - the same shops, same pubs, same people strolling the streets. But in other ways things have changed. Claire is beginning to inhabit her memories, spiraling into despair, her husband Andrew must rescue her. Then when he discovers an intruder has broken into his hotel room, he senses the direction of a new threat. Has the darkness that compelled Morton come to possess Chris? David appeals to Chris's family for help, only to be met by their resentment and hostility. Now David realises only he can prevent tragedy revisiting Southcliffe.