Growing up in a Scottish village, best friends with the boys next door, Nina Findlay thought her life would unfold like an old folktale. She ended up marrying one of those boys, remaining best friends with the other. And for many years the three of them assured themselves that the triangle was stable.
Until one fateful evening, her brother-in-law appears on her doorstep and seems to want her to jump ship.
Nina, encouraged to take a break, travels to a small island in Greece - the same that she and her husband had honeymooned on 25 years earlier - and, four days in, is involved in a near-fatal road accident.
While convalescing in the village hospital - filled by what the hospital's doctor calls 'survivor's euphoria' - Nina can't stop thinking and remembering and obsessing about the details of the past. The time has come, she realises, to unravel the taut knot of her life...
