What To Do When Someone Dies

Happily-married teacher Ellie Manning is devastated when two policewomen tell her that her husband Greg has been killed in a car crash, the more so on learning that he had a glamorous passenger, events organizer Milena Livingstone, who died with him. Ellie seeks out Milena's cold widower Hugo, who believes that the dead couple were having an affair but Ellie is not convinced and later refutes similar suggestions from friends and family. She is however suspicious of Milena's appearance in her husband's life and becomes obsessive in trying to prove that they were strangers. Posing as her friend Gwen she engineers a meeting with Milena's business partner Frances.

As Gwen, Ellie gets a job with Frances, who confesses to her unhappy marriage to David,which led her to an affair though she learns little about Milena, beyond the fact that she was a serial adulteress, a fact confirmed by Hugo, who says he is happy that she is dead. She is still imagining Greg to be in her life and so, persuaded by friends, sees a grief counsellor, to whom she admits she cannot grieve until she knows the full facts of his death. A love letter from Milena,supposedly to Greg, found by Ellie's friends, turns out to have been written to Johnny, the handsome Irish chef who is pursuing her. Finally entering Milena's computer she is disturbed by messages between Milena and David, the more so when she finds Frances dead.

After confessing her true identity to an angry Johnny, Ellie unsuccessfully tries to persuade a police inspector that Frances's and Greg's deaths were linked. Drunk and abusive, Frances's husband David turns up and admits to an affair with Milena to spite his wife's infidelity but has an alibi for her murder. Then Hugo visits Ellie with a letter that shows that Milena and Greg only met once, on a professional basis, and, after visiting their client Ellie is aghast to discover that somebody she trusted murdered three people. Obtaining a result, however, almost costs her own life.