One long, languid midsummer?s day, the Godleys gather at the family home of Arden to attend their father?s bedside. Adam, the elder child, and Petra, only nineteen, find that relations with their stepmother, Ursula, and their dying father, old Adam, are as strained as ever. Adam?s relationship with his wife, Helen, seems too on the brink of collapse and Petra, fragile and deeply troubled, finds deepest relief in her own pain.