Three friends, Althea Lewis, Phoebe Denton and Cressida Cruse have been friends since schooldays. Cressida had been to art college and emerged a promising young artist who soon started to make a name for herself. Fiercely independent, she never married. Althea married, had a son, divorced, and was now married to the successful, but arrogant, businessman Geoffrey Lewis. And now that the initial ardour had cooled, and she took stock of her life coming up to forty, she wasn't sure she was still in love with him. Phoebe became an actress, and had been seriously involved with her married lover. Her calling meant she only kept in touch sporadically with her once-inseparable friends. But this time when they met up and Phoebe heard that the time for Geoffrey's annual charity Garden Party was imminent, she volunteered a fortune-telling acquaintance of hers. And Madame Tokoly was sufficiently accurate to unnerve Geoffrey totally. From that moment, things go from bad to worse, and Geoffrey's behaviour is under scrutiny. If the past comes to life, then death, more than one, is a rude awakening...