Following the death of her youngest son in a motorbike accident, Maria is cast into a dark featureless world where familiar and established boundaries have been wiped out. With no experience of such tragedy and no coping mechanisms to draw strength from, she is totally adrift and overwhelmed by an all-pervading sense of fear.
Although life will never be the same again, the story is of Maria's path back into the half-light as she reflects back over time and tries to steady herself.
There is humour and joy to be found in past memories from her own childhood and happy times spent with her three children, but her grief takes its toll on her second, late-in-life marriage to Matthew.
As she begins to find some resolution and peace, Maria accepts a compromised way of living somewhere between the past and the present.
The future she'll leave for another day.