Times are looking lean for Cassie Swann. With the bridge supplies business in a slump and no new sources of income on the horizon, she's shocked to find herself cadging drinks off OAPs. But her own problems are forgotten when one of her bridge group, Lolly Haden White, starts seeming very distressed. Are her lapses of memory and dark moods simply a consequence of growing old, or is there something more sinister behind her sudden decline? Realizing that she knows next to nothing about Lolly's history, Cassie decides to do a little investigating, only to find that Lolly has done a remarkable job of covering up the details of her early life - in particular the time she spent in Africa as a young woman. Cassie begins to suspect that some long-suppressed secret from those days has come back to haunt Lolly - and when a brutal murder shocks the village, Cassie is convinced that the evil Lolly long ago battled against has to be confronted again.