There's no way to soften this, so I'll say it outright. I already have a wife.' In a single sentence, Walter Radcliffe destroyed everything Kate Sullivan had lived for up to their wedding day. Conventional family life in 1920s rural Somerset left her totally unprepared for the shame and disgrace of being jilted. Desperate to escape, she accepts the insulting gifts of Walter's money and his sham wedding ring and flees to the honeymoon hotel in Bournemouth to try and forget.