Unlike the other residents of Middleton Hall, Stella is elegant, smart and in control. Only Jenny, her care assistant, knows that she harbours a painful secret, and only she can prevent Stella from carrying it to the grave. As the women talk, Jenny pieces together the answers to many questions that arise: Why has she kept possession of a house that her family don't know about? What happened there that holds the key to a distant tragedy? As Jenny uses the house to meet her lover, she makes some unusual discoveries, but only when Stella leaves Jenny her tape recorder, into which she has recorded the true events of the past, can the truth be finally – and shockingly – revealed.