As 73-year-old Rosamund sits alone in her remote Shropshire house, her dying thoughts turn to her cousin's granddaughter, Imogen, who has been blind from an early age Rosamund realises that she has one last duty to perform to describe on tape, for Imogen, a series of photographs which between them tell a tragic family history At the centre of the narrative is Imogen's grandmotehr, Beatrix, whose flight from her husband after the war in search of freedom and excitement left a damaging legacy