A Battered husband, a beautiful unhappy women and a failed priest are brought together during a trial one cold, wet spring in the west of England.

Melissa Wraxall though that she was happy – until she was summoned to act as a juror in a murder trial. In court she had to listen to accounts of horrifyingly violent marriage, but while the life of the tortured defendant in the dock seemed far away from her own sweet, golden existence, with a ravishing house in Bath, her successful small business her handsome husband, loving mother and supportive friends, Melissa began to hear disturbing echoes of her own life in the evidence which unfolded.

Suddenly all the things which she had prized proved to be tinged with doubt and violence, and as the trial moved to its shocking conclusion she found herself having to judge her own actions – and those of the people she loved.