They are planning for a baby. Then, tragically, Matt dies suddenly of an aneurysm. Deep in grief, Sophie is persuaded by her extrovert friend Anna to go for a holiday to Montengro with Anna’s son Tomasz (she is Polish). Rashly (it appears to her family and friends), Sophie buys a run-down stone house on the Bay of Kotor, mainly it seems because she finds a box of unopened letters in some furniture.