Sarah Fortune's surname has visited her domestic arrangements - an ex-lover has bequeathed her a flat in London's Fitzrovia. Here she lives alone, unfettered by her past career as a lawyer, unfazed by her current arrangements as a part-time mistress.Insouciant by nature, she isn't even unduly worried by the threatening letters. The ones from her benefactor'd son, demanding she give the flat to him or suffer one of those accidents thet, he warns, 'can happen'.

Not far from Sarah lives Henry Brett. He is a resident of the once-bourgeois Golden Street - a roda now paved, for Henry, with misery. His life has been flattened by the tyranny of his upstairs neighbour Celia Hornby, whose days are spent intimidating Henry, going for massages and ensuring that her budgerigar Boris doesn't fly the coop. Not liken her previous Boris, who was her husband and left her for a younger bird.

When, through a shared acquaintance, Sarah meets the beleaguered Henry, she suggests they swap abodes. Bold where he is broken, she figures she can sort out both problems while he gains respite from his. Sarah is, after all, good at problems. Except this time she is playing with fire...