Cecile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cecile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey - in silence? What could they possibly say to one another? with the reader gaining entree to the most private of thoughts.