*Spoiler Warning* - This is not a back of the book synopsis. This is a full synopsis to present investors with the best information to base their investment decision on. It will spoil the book for you. - *Spoiler Warning*

This book is split into three parts: the first deals with Chris’ first meeting with Jenny, the second with his search for her, and the third with the tragic ending. The first sentence gives away the doomed nature of the book: Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm Oxford evening....

The seventeen-year-old main character, Chris, works for a lighting company in Oxford, England. While rigging up a party he inadvertently rescues a beautiful young woman in a white dress from upper-class thugs. Smitten, he looks for her, but she has disappeared into the night, leaving the white dress in a boat shed. Before she goes, he finds out that her name is Jenny, and that she had gate crashed the party. The thugs’ leader, Piers, recognized her and was threatening to turn her in, unless she slept with him.

He then searches for her for many weeks, and eventually finds her squatting in an empty house with two friends (not, as he fears, her lovers). He asks her out on a date, and she accepts, much to his joy. After this, he goes to his father’s house (his parents have divorced three weeks ago; their emotionless parting chills him), and meets his mistress, Diane. She asks him how his mother is, hoping that she hasn’t forced her into deep depression by taking her husband away from her. Chris tells her that she has a boyfriend, called Mike, and she is feeling much better.

His father mentions that they are going abroad for a weekend together, and asks him if he would house-sit for them. Of course, Chris agrees, and plans to bring Jenny there for a romantic weekend. After another date Chris asks Jenny to spend the weekend with him at his father’s house after they kiss passionately in the park. She says that she will be there.

Meanwhile, we hear about Jenny’s past at the hands of her abusive father. She comes from Yorkshire (and still retains a Northern accent), and after suffering at his hands very literally leaves home on the morning of her sixteenth birthday - the story is set a year later.

On the night which she was supposed to arrive, she does not come. And so, crestfallen and love-sick, Chris goes to bed. The next morning Jenny arrives, and after having tea on the porch they go into his father’s bedroom and make love. He is a virgin, while she is much more experienced, and he notices she has a tattoo of a butterfly above her left breast.

The next day, when Jenny leaves, she finds that the house in which she and her friends had been illegally squatting has been the victim of a police drugs raid. Her hippie flat mates are taken into custody for possession of cannabis, and, despite her innocence, she flees the scene, since she does not trust the police as they failed to help her over her father’s abuse. And so, as she only knows Chris’ first name, and not his address or even his last name, she loses contact with him.