It is October 1918 and London is gathering in its dead. For Henry Speake of Speake Son Undertakers laying to rest the shattered young bodies of those sent home from the Front to die has become a grimly familiar reality. But what he is seeing now, as influenza claims its victims with increasing speed and force, is something different; for the first time in his life, Henry feels afraid of death. Unable to share his fears with his waspish, disapproving sisters, Henry turns to Mrs Allen Thompson, a recently widowed school teacher, so beginning a friendship which gradually, stumblingly, pulls them in a direction neither has been prepared for.