Fifty-one-year old Hetty is an unmarried schoolteacher who has lived with her mother all her life. On her mother's death she is liberated and finds herself wooed by Clive and the widowed artist Tom, father of one of her students, Megan. Megan's friends, Jit and Balbiro, are Sikh cousins who are both facing arranged marriages. While Jit agrees and accepts her fate, Balbiro rebels against her family's choice and disappears. But, as Hetty and Jit both learn to manipulate events to their own advantage, the true horror of Balbiro's situation is revealed.