India 1930.
Kate and Julia are accompanying recently widowed Mrs Penelope Winter through India. Returning to their rooms late one night, they are taken prisoner to be trained and sold as concubines. Horrified, terrified and scandalised that this could be happening to them, they soon discover that being British makes no difference to the way they are treated. For each of them it is a journey of self-discovery, although they take to their new situation in very different ways. Mrs Winter, meanwhile, is armed and in search of them, and finding out for herself that a woman alone and without much money in India may have to satisfy the desires of those she meets in order to elicit the assistance she needs.