Virginia Green lies dying. Downstairs her kin sit, wait and quarrel. Alone with her memories she coolly charts her long, full life, not by decades but by the people she has loved: her mother Grace who could only survive by pleasing a man, her grandmother Irene who showed Virginia that love has many faces, the men she has loved herself, and their betrayals. Yet, at the end, Virginia is convinced "that the only sin of this world is not to love".