Phyllida Moon's contract with the Independent Theatre Company and her marriage to its stage manager come to an end together, and when the Company moves on she stays behind in the seaside town where they played their last engagement of the summer season. To help her feel at home in her role as a private eye in a forthcoming TV series, Phyllida finds a job with a real-life detective agency where she sleuths in character, entering the life of the unhappy Brian Fletcher as two very different women. Fletcher is under suspicion from a neighbour of abusing his adoptive daughter, the cool and enigmatic schoolgirl Judith, and displays the tension of a guilty man...