Emma is a gallery owner in London. For seven years, she was in a relationship with Jerry, a literary agent who is also the best friend of her husband Robert, a publisher. The play opens with a confession—not a confession to her husband about her past infidelity, but a confession to Jerry: Emma tells him that she has just told her husband everything.

Using a reverse chronological structure, Harold Pinter retraces the seven years of this love triangle: from separations to reunions, from confessions to lies. By reversing the timeline of this plot, he highlights its turmoil and contradictions and offers us a complex analysis of romantic feelings and unspoken truths.