Clio is staying with her aunt, Hester, at Bridge House on the edge of Exmoor. A beautiful house, it is the scene of many happy childhood memories. But Clio has no idea that it was the setting for a terrible incident after the Second World War.
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.