Anne resists reading the will, remembering instead the passion and the vows she shared with her husband, Catholic in public but 'their own kind of marriage' in private. These unusual vows accommodated their desires as individuals, but left Anne alone in Stratford to raise their three children. She relives the decision points where Bill's London life became a separate existence. When plague sweeps the country, she must find a way to protect the children without news or support from William and relates her decision to take them to the seashore, far from disease and death. Her flight repeats her own childhood journey, when her father brought her and her siblings to the sea and away from the plague which killed her mother.