A house and garden on the island of Guernsey. In the cold light of dawn Beatrice Shaye is arrested in her rose garden on suspicion of having committed murder. The victim: Helene Feldmann, the woman who lived in the house with Beatrice since her childhood. Beatrice demands that her son, the lawyer Alan Shaye, should take charge of her defence. But Alan is not convinced that his mother is innocent, so she begs him to listen while she tells her story.

Trapped by fate in a relationship dominated by revulsion and hatred, Beatrice had lived for many years with Helene Feldmann. The two women appeared in some mysterious way to be chained to one another - and this has been the situation since the year 1940, when Beatrice was virtually adopted as a child by Helene and her husband Erich, a senior German officer, while the Channel Islands were occupied by German forces during the Second World War. From the very beginning the Feldmanns were rivals for Beatrice’s affection. In the final days of the war the situation became catastrophic: Beatrice killed Erich Feldmann in order to protect the love of her life, the French prisoner of war Julien. Helene, for whom Erich's death represented the end of a period of torment in her life, concealed the crime. But when she was freed from an unhappy marriage she became obsessed with the young Beatrice, soon adopting the role of her destructive shadow. Until she was murdered. The clues now point towards Julien, who has reappeared on the island after so many years and appears to be involved in some shady business.