The novel opens with Jenny Bunn's arrival at her lodging-house. She's a young, strikingly beautiful, Northern girl who has moved to a small town outside London, to take her first teaching job. Jenny has rented a room in the home of middle-aged couple, Dick and Martha Thompson. Dick is apparently some sort of auctioneer and Martha is a housewife, who is bored, cynical and at times openly hostile towards young Jenny. Anna, the Thompsons' other lodger, is a changeable young woman who is apparently French.