Bourgeois housewife Ruth Whiting is "paralysed by triviality," measuring out her days in coffee mornings, glasses of sherry, and bridge parties--routines that barely disturb the solitude of her existence. Her husband spends his weeknights in town; their daughter, eighteen-year-old Angela, is at Oxford; and their sons are at boarding school. Then Angela accidentally falls pregnant, and Ruth must keep her own past from repeating itself.