Mrs Sartoris is a provincial German wife and mother, perfectly ordinary seeming. Yet she harbours secrets and enmities which have been simmering since her teenage rejection by a well-born lover. Calculating yet impulsive, narcissistic, passionate and deadly, she remains contained within a grey and conventional existence. At late middle age, Mrs Sartoris is confronted by danger: a lover who brings her sensual release and humiliation in equal parts, and a man who has ensnared her biting, ironic, withdrawn daughter in a slavish and dangerous relationship. A fleeting opportunity - a male figure in a raincoat on a deserted street late at night - offers the chance of a lifetime's revenge.