After an affair which ends in tragedy, Teresa leaves her unhappy marriage and seeks refuge in a cottage in the country.

She has not had peace and solitude for long however, before she meets her neighbour, Gloria: tactless, controlling ? and impossible to avoid.

Gloria has her own tragedy: the suicide of her daughter Rachel three years earlier. Teresa tries to be sympathetic, but Gloria loves to manipulate the truth, and tries to dominate everything, including the lives of her widowed son-in-law and his two children.

As Teresa becomes more involved with the people in her new life, her own past starts to catch up with her, and Gloria's behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre and destructive.

And there are other secrets in the past, that Gloria is determined to keep hidden.