Anna Loos plays the reserved wife of politician Frederick Quentin (Michael von Au), who is standing for election to the German parliament. Their marriage is in a crisis. While she is on holiday with her husband and daughter on the wild, romantic English coast, Virginia meets a German man, Nathan Moor (Daniel Morgenroth) and from the first moment she is attracted to this intellectual adventurer who is sailing around the world single-handed in his little boat. But as they are driving back to Bristol the Quentins hear on a news bulletin that the German sailor has been shipwrecked and is missing. Back home the family discovers that a terrible crime has been committed nearby, apparently a child murderer is at large here. Like the majority of parents in the neighbourhood, the Quentins are desperately worried about their seven-year-old daughter, Kim. When Frederik has to go to London on business for a week, the missing Nathan suddenly turns up on Virginia’s doorstep. He tells her that he survived the shipwrecked but has lost everything. She offers to help him, and before long she plunges into an affair with Nathan. Then Kim vanishes without a trace on her way back from school, andVirginia begins to suspect the unthinkable...