When the firemen arrive at the old Rectory, they find the Rector and his wife are victims of the blaze, but hear a scream and find 5 year old Catherine, badly burned but alive. On arrival at St Marks Hospital Burns Unit the staff commence emergency treatment, but despite that she does not respond and becomes introverted. Night Sister Alison Brewer decides to take in a small tape recorder and tapes of Mozart. This is the first sign of improvement when Catherine responds. However a problem arises when it is discovered by social department that the child is not the biological daughter of the Rector and his wife, having fostered the child when abandoned on the steps of their previous church. This means that a search must be made for next of kin. When Catherine is to leave hospital a court hearing sees Alison and Stewart Brewer allowed care of her while further inquiries are made. Catherine watches Stewart playing the piano and they soon realize that she is extremely talented. As the search for relatives goes on they want to adopt her. However the social worker Dorothy Lewis in charge of the search eventually finds that the mother was a sixteen year old girl who approached Dr Martin Coulthard hoping to have the pregnancy terminated after being thrown out of her home because of her disgrace. As the pregnancy was too far for this and she did not take his advice for a home for unmarried mothers, running out of the surgery, later to be found dead on the moors. Dorothy decides to search for the girls mother and eventually finds her. The court hearing sees the magistrate allow the grandmother care of Catherine. Leaving Alison and Stewart she has no chance of even saying goodbye. Catherine gradually becomes withdrawn again and does not speak again. Not having her music and far away from Alison and Stewart, her life has no meaning and she becomes introverted. Two years later Dorothy Lewis finds that Catherine has not been having the necessary grafting of the burns on her back, she checks up and what she finds when she sees Catherine makes her take her to St Marks. Catherine is again placed in the care of the Brewers, and her life turns for the better but not before she can put her life when taken from them behind her. Her music is restored, and seen by Maestro Max Bruemer she enters the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris. Music becomes her life seeing her reach the Lincoln Centre in New York. The journey has its problems before she reaches the top and has the world at her feet with her music.