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School-girl Jodie Nicholas is horrified to discover her parents have killed themselves in a suicide pact. This brings Mark,her thirty-year old brother back from London to the town,Renton,where he grew up to find incompetent trainee undertaker Daniel drop his mother's corpse. He moves into the family home with Jodie and his grandmother Betty and is persuaded by friends to go to the pub but feels alien from then and,having got very drunk,calls on old flame Alice - to be seen off by her husband Karl. Jodie meanwhile befriends scholarship pupil Harry and they take a midnight swim together. Len,the town's alcoholic mayor,makes the headlines after starting a fight in a pub to the dismay of Shireen,his deputy, but he does save the day with a superb oration at the funerals. Mark is intrigued to find the words I Know on scraps of paper in his parents' room and on their mobile phones.
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Harry asks Jodie to a party where she gets drunk and tries to seduce him but when he rejects her she goes off to have sex with the older Ashley. Alice is clearly not as happy as she makes out and ends up having sex with Mark in a hotel room - the same hotel where Betty and sacked undertaker Daniel are working as cleaners. Mark is convinced that his parents' death was not suicide and stays in the town,taking work at the council offices where his mother Kate was employed. Shireen finds a photograph album in Kate's belongings with pictures of her embracing Chris Franks,the police officer who investigated the Nicholas' deaths and,against Len's advice,shows it to Mark. Betty tells Mark that Kate and Chris has a lengthy affair which made her happy as her marriage was stale but Mark rushes off to confront the inspector. Next day Chris has gone missing and Mark is taken in by the police.
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Mark is released by the police but sacked from his job. After he is beaten up by two thugs he gets a call from Jodie to go to the hospital as Betty has collapsed at work. Betty has two other visitors - Chris,who says he believes Tony knew of his wife's affair and killed her and Daniel,who tells her he had an interest in the family as Tony helped him when he was going off the rails. Mark gives Jodie a birthday tea,over which she tells him that Kate bought flowers every June 14th and he follows this through,discovering that she placed them on the grave of Len's teen-aged son,killed in a hit-and-run. As Len retires from the mayoralty,handing over to Shireen,Mark draws a connection between the hit-and-run and his parents' deaths,finally solving the mystery. Whilst Shireen promises good times for the town Alice agrees to make a go of things with Mark whilst Jodie dumps Ashley for Harry.
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