"Complacency upheld her...But if she ever paused, even for a moment, complacency would vanish and she would once more know herself to be cheated. Happiness, always promised for to-morrow, never far from yesterday, found no lodging in her heart. It was not fair." Betsy is married to Alec. They have three half-grown children, a Hampstead home, a holiday house in Wales and all the comforts of British middle-class life between the wars. It is 1936 and Betsy is thirty-seven. Alec, she discovers, has been having a desultory affair - one of no importance to him, and at first even Betsy is not too concerned about it. But where, Betsy feels, is the happiness which is her due? And she is tired; houses, servants, children mke eternal demands upon her, family and friends constantly interfere - in this instance just once too often, with startling results...