Ben Makepeace has barely thought of Jacob since school. What he remembers is a competitive, manipulative boy, impinging on his life like a cuckoo planted in a nest. Now Ben is the wrong side of forty with a young son to support and in need of a backer to bankroll his latest film script. A call to meet hedge-fund billionaire Victor Sheldon is promising, but there's a surprise in store - Victor is Jacob, now firmly entrenched in a gilded world of riches and glamour. History can cast a long shadow and while Ben believes his childhood is well over, he soon discovers the roots of the past dig deep, and some can't let it go.