Sent to a hospital on the edge of the moor to recover from 'nerve trouble', Daniel finds himself more and more distant from the world he once knew. The smallest, most routine things - a room of his won, the view from the window, the making of tea and coffee - begin to afford him intense pleasure. The complexities of the outside world hold few attractions for him; protected as he is from his wife, his mother-in-law, his brother, in hospital he is safe.

Until he is made to leave and finds himself in a world crowded with the ghosts of his past life, forced to live in a society in which he feels an outsider.