From far and wide the family gathers at the coastal town: an aged father is fetched from an old age home, a middle-class family arrives from a neighbouring country, two brothers break the silence on a droning motorcycle and the doors of a four-by-four slam shut behind the restless children of the chic wife of a diplomat.

It is an unusual gathering, because a history of resentment and sadness has long since diluted the family ties to little more than sporadic contacts. And for this reason at this gathering in an idyllic coastal setting there is little resistance to the dark undercurrents that seek to burst to the surface with the force of a volcano.

What would move Gerhardt, a divorced loner, to organise the gathering? How could Dorothea, who with her iron will and self-righteousness is ideally equipped for the role of matriarch, have remained indifferent to the fortunes of her family for so long? Is it her art, the gossamer-fine tapestries through which she attempts to convey the complexities and nuances of her observations, that is her stronghold? Or is her art in fact an image of her family heritage – a seething cordage of ravellings and loose threads that underlie the sublime surface? Perhaps this is Gerhardt’s motive – that he is painfully aware that there is something large and indescribably dark that has to break through all the glittering layers to the surface.