For 34-year-old Eve Weston, life couldn't get much bleaker. Her con artist father recently committed suicide and her younger brother Terry was sent to jail. Then she lost her job too, because a close friendship with married solicitor Henry Baxter was misconstrued as an affair. Having temporarily moved away from London, she's now living in her father's old flat in one of the shabbier parts of Norwich. On a visit to see Terry, Eve is shocked to find him battered and bruised. He refuses to tell her who has done it or why. Eve begins to have serious fears that her brother won't survive his sentence, and in desperation she turns to another prisoner, a dangerous-seeming individual called Martin Cavelli. They make a secret pact: if Cavelli protects Terry then she will pay whatever it costs.