While her husband, Peter, attends the funeral of a friend, newlywed Julia confides the circumstances of her marriage to her assertive and inefficient maid Victoria. These include her arrival in Rome from the provinces; her brief tenure in a stationery store and her dismissal for spilling ink on a customer; her affair with the black-bearded author Manolo; her impregnation and desertion; her friendship with Manolo's slovenly wife, Topaz; her miscarriage; and her meeting with Peter at a drunken party. Ten days later they marry, moving into a hilltop apartment, the patio of which Julia furnishes with a trampoline. The day following her confession to the maid, Julia entertains Peter's mother and sister, Juniper. During an inedible meal, her mother-in-law, Julia's former customer, recognizes the bride, despite the fact that she has combed her hair in her face, donned sunglasses, and is bending her knees to conceal the effect of her miniskirt. Appalled by her son's choice of mate, Peter's pious mother decries the civil ceremony uniting the couple, accuses Julia of marrying for money, and storms out of the flat, thereby initiating a quarrel between the lovers. Asserting that she will take a lover, Julia rushes to the adjacent apartment, only to find the English tenant gone and an indecent picture of Manolo, evidently his lover, displayed prominently. Pursued by Peter, Julia jumps out the window, only to reappear seconds later. Her husband promptly joins her on the trampoline, onto which she has fallen.