"You can't trust anyone in times like these, Ruth . it might be the very last thing you ever do." In a time of war, everyone has to make tough decisions about where their loyalties lie -- and by the time that the enigmatic Jack Barnard, allegedly a humble water engineer, arrives on the Sussex coast in the grim winter of 1940-41, he has already made his choice. Cocooned in a half-empty seaside hotel with a motley band of fellow guests, Jack waits -- only too aware of his strengthening feelings for Ruth Cook, his landlady. Both are happily married, but these are hardly normal times; and, very soon, both are to find themselves caught up in one of World War II's strangest, most desperate episodes.