On a chilly February day, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both had been Molly's lovers in the days before they became part of London's elite. Another of Molly's paramours was a foreign secretary who's stumping for Prime Minister. Urged by Molly's husband to sabotage the secretary's chances, the pair find themselves making moral choices that could have disastrous results.