What to Do When Someone Dies

Ellie Manning is a happily married schoolteacher, trying for a baby with her accountant husband, Greg. Then one night, two policewomen come to her door to inform her that Greg has been killed in a car crash-along with a woman named Milena, who was in the car with him. The police and Milena's widower, Hugo, believe the two were having an affair, but Ellie is not convinced.

Ellie meets Frances, a coworker of Milena's, and assumes a fake identity to try to find evidence of her husband's affair. Hugo comes to see Ellie and divulges that Milena was a serial adulteress, and that he's happy she's dead. Upon the urging of her worried friends, Ellie starts seeing a counselor, but she realizes that she cannot process her grief until she learns the truth about the accident.

After confessing her true identity to an angry Johnny, Ellie unsuccessfully tries to persuade a police inspector that Frances's and Greg's deaths were linked. Drunk and abusive, Frances's husband David turns up and admits to an affair with Milena to spite his wife's infidelity. Obtaining the truth behind the murders puts Ellie into danger.