Nicholas is running away, both from his marriage and an unfaithful wife, and the comfortable life he has known in Dublin. He buys a run down house in rural Cavan, right in the heart of Ireland, and embarks on a huge renovation project. While he is there, the house seems to speak to him - there are voices coming from an untraceable source, the seductive smell of baking seeps through the walls, and there is the unmistakable ethereal presence of a woman from the past. She is June Fanning, an English woman who lived in the house in 1941. As her narrative combines with Nicholas´s, the story of The Adulteress is revealed - and Nicholas begins to discover exactly what went wrong with his own marriage.