Set in rural England in the 1950s Eva fantasises about her handsome, worldly cousin Joseph Lees, with whom she fell in love as a girl. However, stuck in a closed community she becomes the object of someone else's fantasy, Harry. When Harry learns that Eva is planning to leave the village in order to live with and look after the injured Lees, he devises a gruesome scheme in order to force her to stay and look after him.