The ten-year marriage of Mark and Joanna Wallace is on the rocks. In flashback they recall their first meeting, memorable moments in their courtship and early wedded life, their travels through Europe, their broken vow never to have children, and their increasing tensions that led to both of them having extra-marital affairs.

The rape of his teenage daughter instigated a violent, maniacal retribution on the perpetrator for which Georges was incarcerated in an asylum for the insane. When a stranger enters a quiet, country town and is seduced by a sensuous married woman he unwittingly finds himself at the centre of a storm of sexual guilt and murder for which he has been carefully and surreptitiously groomed to take full responsibility.