In post-war London Viv Pearce, seeing married spiv Reggie, runs a dating bureau with Helen Giniver, who lives with her older lover, authoress Julia Standing. Viv s younger brother Duncan, a tormented homosexual, has been in prison and is sought out by his - straight - ex-cellmate Robert Fraser, who served time as a conscientious objector and is now concerned for the boy s welfare. Viv encounters Kay Langrish, a wealthy, reclusive butch lesbian and for both women this evokes memories of 1944 when Kay was an heroic ambulance driver and Helen was Kay s girlfriend, before Kay introduced her to her ex-lover Julia. Viv had an illegal abortion, funded by Reggie, and, after she needed hospital treatment, Kay saved her from prosecution by claiming she was a married woman who had miscarried. Three years earlier Kay and Julia are still an item and Viv meets unhappily married soldier Reggie on a train...