Tony Wendice is a former tennis player who married Sheila (called Margot in the movie) partly for her money. To please his wife, he has given up tennis and now has a job selling sports equipment. Sheila had a relationship with Max Halliday (played by Robert Cummings in the movie, as Mark Halliday), a crime writer for American TV, but they broke it off when Max went to the U.S. for a year. Eventually, they also stopped writing to each other.