Dr Daniel Gregory is a GP in a picturesque Mid-Staffordshire market town. Divorced and denied visiting rights to his seven year-old daughter, he is lonely and vulnerable to the dysfunctional behaviour of some of the locals. Like Vanda Struel, a single parent who repeatedly brings her toddler into the surgery with a succession of increasingly bizarre complaints. Or Chelsea Emmanuel, a precocious teenager who makes advances to him only to plan pathological revenge when he refuses. Or the fatally damaged town policeman, who suspects Daniel of harbouring an unhealthy attraction for his French wife...When an elderly woman patient is mistakenly given a terminal diagnosis, Vanda becomes pregnant with her second child and Daniel's own possessive mother arrives on the scene, things head inexorably towards the final breaking point.