Compared to the inner-city parish of St. Sylvester's, St. Veep's Girls' School in the heart of leafy Kensington is a haven of civility but Theodora Braithwaite quickly realises that there are unpleasant undercurrents beneath the harmonious surface. As she moves between the contrasting worlds of Kensington, the multicultural parish of St Sylvester’s and finally Cyprus, she begins to find her way through a maze of corruption, cupidity and incompetence that reaches back to the second world war and beyond.