Brenda Vale is 26, a nurse, very pretty and highly intelligent, with a newly acquired German girlfriend. Nigel Dodd is 23 and sole heir to the family fortune. Their story is a very black comedy indeed, a tale of seduction, bribery, and corruption in high places, set in England in 1955. But it is also about growing up, and innocence, and forgiveness and redemption; and what becomes of Brenda.