Alison Chesterton works in the Canberra press gallery. She is single, promiscuous, jaded, cynical, disillusioned; she wonders about the health of her soul. The languor of another day in Canberra is interrupted by a phone call bringing the journalist’s Holy Grail, an inside tip: the first scent of a story that will break hearts and create reputations. It is also the animating act in the narrative permitting Sonya Voumard to shift the story from Canberra to Alice Springs, and then to Melbourne, as Chesterton researches the rumour.