Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life. Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.

Dario, recently retired, suffers from inexplicable crying fits. One day, he decides to visit his son Mimmo, who has just started working away from home. Mimmo, embarrassed by the unexpected intrusion, avoids the meeting. Dario spends the day with Clara and Mirco, Mimmo's flatmates.