Separated - psychologically and socially from what he once was, Michael Blake, a cynical and unsuccessful self-employed teacher of English as a foreign language is in Rome trying to sell his services. On hearing of the impending death of his mother, he returns to the north of England, from where he had left some 30 years before, in a confused search for a legacy. Many years before, Blake had been involved in a Christmas Eve street fight, where his assailant had been wounded, and such incident was the trigger for him to decide to leave England and put such a life behind him. In his attempts to uncover the truth of the missing legacy, he encounters a divided family and society. In his pursuit of his missing brother Jack whom he believes to have spent the legacy, Blake finds his allegiance torn between his market-trader cousin June and his university lecturer brother John; however, such is Blake s self-regard that he thinks little about having a fling along the way with John s mistress, Samantha.Blake s self-righteous quest for the truth about the missing money and the hunt for his brother, leads only to a shattering truth about himself: that it is he who is responsible for the loss of both - but more than this, murder also seems to be involved.