"The coal-black African skin next to her still flawless epidermis of the creamy white variety only served to heighten her sense of excitement for what was both exotic and illicit. ... She, Elaine Fordham, wife of Brian these past thirteen years, was fucking another man – or, to be more factual, was being absolutely fucked by one." In affluent and historic Sussex, a husband who has given up his own career to promote that of his wife's is about to discover his self-sacrifice counts for nothing when that wife is given the opportunity to make up for years of unsatisfactory sex. This opportunity that will be less fulfilling for him than it is for her, as he finds that not only will his own opportunities for lovemaking be curtailed almost to extinction. He will, however be forced to perform domestic duties.