Thirteen-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.
Dearest Cecilia, the story can resume. The one I had been planning on that evening walk. I can become again the man who once walked across a Surrey park at dusk in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life; the man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library. The story can resume. I will return. Find you, love you, marry you, and live without shame.
— I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your neck here and throwing you down the stairs. Have you any idea what it’s like in jail? Course you don’t. Tell me, did it give you pleasure to think of me inside?
— No.
— But you did nothing about it.
— No.
— Do you think I assaulted your cousin?
— No.
— Did you think it then?
— Yes, yes and no. I wasn’t certain.
— And what’s made you so certain now?
— Growing up.
— Growing up?
— I was thirteen.
— How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? Do you have to be eighteen before you can own up to a lie? There are soldiers of eighteen old enough to be left to die on the side of the road! Did you know that?
— Yes.
— Five years ago you didn’t care about telling the truth. You and all your family, you just assumed that for all my education, I was still a little better than a servant, still not to be trusted. Thanks to you, they were able to close ranks and throw me to the fucking wolves.