Josie, worn out with doing three people’s work during an epidemic, looked forward to her holiday on Marganeta, a charming island off the Spanish coast. She was going to enjoy a wonderfully lazy two months. No feverish record-searching, no worrying herself silly because patients wouldn’t take care. Just quiet, careless bliss! But she hadn't allowed for various disturbing elements. There was her brother Denis, in worse trouble than usual; her stepmother, with just a hint of claws beneath the velvet; Rick Hedley, feckless, a no-good, yet with an element of attraction; and above all, and the real menace to her peace of mind, there was that dominating, dynamic character, Stuart Mendoza-Cortez Morland.