Briony Eastwood, cook extraordinary, is putting the past, and her difficult, unfaithful, and very much missing-presumed-dead husband behind her. Offered a live-in contract from her agent at short notice, she happily accepts sight-unseen. She doesn't know Carey Barnes, an investigative TV reporter and her new employer, but she remembers his beautiful movie-star wife Roz de Traffort from her hey-day and is looking forward to a glamorous Christmas. But it's soon clear that all in the Barnes family is not well. Carey has been receiving anonymous, vicious hate mail, which could be involved with his investigations of a Russian mafia ring in London. Roz has a not-so-secret drinking problem and a toy-boy trainer on the premises. And Roz's beautiful teenage daughter, Miranda, is obsessively protective of her six-year-old stepsister, Pebbles, particularly around Carey. Briony quickly realises that the only stable person appears to be Miranda's American boyfriend, Gizmo. When Briony finds Roz's dead body at the bottom of the cellar steps after a party, suspicion immediately points to cuckolded Carey, who doesn't have an alibi. But it appears that Roz's death is only the beginning...