On the hottest day of the summer of 1934 thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes & plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner her childhood friend who like Cecilia has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie & Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start & will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries & committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.