Summary

Briony opens the novel by telling the reader that she has confessed to her crimes and wishes to be hanged, making it very clear that her's will not be a story to try to change the reader's mind about this fact. At the end of the admission she jumps back some months to when she first met Eldric. She states that she had been in Swampsea for 17 years with her Father and sister Rose. This was one of their first appearances in public since the suicide of Stepmother, something that Briony could not accept. They met Mr. Clayborne, Eldric's father, a London man who had arrived six months earlier to begin draining the swamp, and who was there to greet his son. Rose was not doing too well out in the cold, and she began coughing which reminded Briony...