Synopsis
John Wraith (46) regains consciousness in hospital. His mind awash with drugs and amnesia. A huge centipede of a scar spread across his forehead. From a motorcar accident in which his wife and daughter died. Because he fell asleep at the wheel.
To heal and find solace he goes to Nature’s Cove, a wild, unspoilt coastal settlement in South Africa, where most of the holiday homes are boarded up and eerily empty over the winter months. It is there that John comes across a teenage girl, Jackie, weeping softly in a boat outside a chalet. He endeavours to help her but she turns on him, blackmailing him, wanting money or she’ll tell everyone that he tried to rape her.
John retreats to his chalet paranoid and fearful. That night the young girl’s father, Roelf, comes to apologise for his daughter’s behaviour. He tells John that Jackie’s been struggling since her mother was murdered in front of her during a vicious robbery at their home.
Despite Jackie’s father’s watchful eye and the ominous presence of Dirk, a gun-toting security guard who wants Jackie to marry him, John and Jackie are drawn inexorably toward one another; he the middle-aged grieving widow, she the Lolita, wise beyond her years, united in their grief and guilt for the death of a loved one. Inevitably, a dangerous physical attraction develops between them. And then, despite the peril of being discovered, John and Jackie consummate their relationship.
John immediately decides to leave but goes to the lagoon to take one last swim. Only to be followed in by Jackie. Both of them naked. But Roelf and Dirk discover them. Jackie immediately swims ashore. Leaving John to confront her murderous father and suitor.
John manages to escape, running blindly through the forest to the safety of his forest cabin. When he arrives, the door is ajar. Did Roelf get there before him? Or Dirk? Nothing can prepare John for what awaits him in this vicious and profoundly shocking ending.