Hope, ambition and a woman take a young man into business in London in the nineties; he finds betrayal, business failure, suicide and a murder.
In England in the nineties, London and the business world seem to offer the prospect of greater success than teaching in Newcastle, in the North East. With an experienced woman to open many new doors for him, a young man leaves his teaching job to come south and pursue his hopes. Unfortunately, an adventure with a woman at work shatters his belief in the strength of his love. A still greater shock, however, comes with the discovery that his girlfriend has been even more profoundly untrue to him. Meanwhile, there is a further blow when a boss he has painfully learned to admire is killed. Many suspect the death was a suicide brought on by the animosity and successful opposition of the company Chief Executive. When that Chief Executive is killed himself, in eerily similar circumstances, it begins to looks as though the company is under a curse and, indeed, the downhill slide continues inexorably. Ultimately alone and facing redundancy, the young man is happy to abandon his earlier glowing ambitions and return to teaching. Before he leaves, however, one more revelation awaits him, one that will allow him at last to understand the events he has witnessed.