Two teachers, man-hungry Doris and restrained Marian, visit the Yorkshire moors a year after friend Evelyn disappeared there. On a stormy night, they take refuge in the isolated cottage of Stephen, one-time pianist shell-shocked in the Spanish Civil War. Doris flees as soon as the flood subsides; but Marian's suspicions about Evelyn's fate, in conflict with her growing love for Stephen, prompt her to stay on among the misty bogs.

Three older sisters live on their family estate in Wales. This household once proudly reigned over a mining town, but the mines dried up and the estate and the town have fallen on hard times. When the land crumbles and a number of homes in the town are destroyed the sisters promise to rebuild the homes.

Two British soldiers and a WREN take refuge at Stonehenge during a thunderstorm, they are struck by lightning and transported back to ancient Rome.

Sanger, an eccentric expatriate composer, dies in his house in the Austrian Alps, leaving his daughters penniless. The young composer Lewis Dodd, a longstanding friend of the family, falls in love with their cousin Florence when she comes to take the girls back to England. But little Tessa Sanger is in love with Lewis herself, and when she runs away from school and comes to live with Florence and her husband, their already-shaky marriage is further undermined