The Secret

Coleraine, Northern Ireland, 1990. Colin Howell is a leading member of the Baptist community, and a loving husband and father. But when he meets fellow Baptist, Hazel Buchanan, they embark on an affair, which will have cataclysmic consequences for his wife Lesley and for Hazel's husband, Trevor. Wanting to remain in the Baptist church Colin refuses to consider divorce, but he and Hazel are desperate to find some way to be together. When Lesley's father dies, and she contemplates suicide, Colin believes that he has found the way...

Colin's hand is forced when Lesley threatens to leave him, and with Hazel's help he immediately puts his plan to murder Lesley and Trevor into motion. He pipes carbon monoxide fumes into their bedrooms while they sleep, and then stages their deaths as a double suicide in Lesley's father's garage. The following morning Colin and Hazel feign their shock at the deaths speculating that Lesley and Trevor must have been driven to suicide by the anguish caused by their affair. But the police sense that something is not quite right.

With whispers in the community and lingering police suspicions Colin and Hazel are prevented from being together, until the Coroner's "Suicide" verdicts put an official end to the speculation. But Hazel feels so guilty that she cannot be physical with Colin except under the influence of increasingly powerful drugs, and she puts an end to their toxic relationship. Both meet new partners and move on, but when Colin's eldest son dies in a freak accident, Colin too becomes convinced that God is punishing him for the murders.

Seeing Matthew's death as God's full & final punishment for his past sins, Colin convinces himself that God will now allow him to prosper, but when he loses all his money in a financial scam and his second wife Kyle threatens to leave him, he confesses everything to the church and to the police, including the murders of Lesley and Trevor 18 years previously. Colin is imprisoned, and Hazel is arrested, interrogated and charged. But when Hazel pleads Not Guilty, Colin agrees to appear as the star witness for the prosecution, determined to take her down with him.