Death of a Cyclist

Traveling within the same well-bred social circle in Madrid, Maria Jose de Castro and Juan Fernandez Soler, in love, are having an affair. They once dated but were separated due to circumstances of the war, Maria Jose, in the interim, marrying her current husband, Miguel Castro. While marriage to wealthy Miguel has only solidified Maria Jose's standing in the group, Juan is largely seen as the black sheep of the circle and his family, he struggling to find his place in life. He got his job as a college professor through his brother-in-law, the college dean who, regardless, he does not much like. Driving along a seemingly isolated road back to Madrid after one of their illicit trysts, Maria Jose, behind the wheel, accidentally strikes a cyclist. While Juan the passenger, rushing to the cyclist's aid, discovers he is still alive, Maria Jose is impulsively able to convince Juan to leave the cyclist behind in fear of this incident exposing their affair. This incident causes greater complications in their lives when they learn later from a newspaper story that a cyclist in a seeming hit-and-run, most-likely their cyclist, has died. As they try to find out as much as they can without being too obvious, that information including if anyone actually did see them hit the cyclist, they become increasingly paranoid about being exposed, especially as one within their own social circle, Rafa Sandoval, implies time after time, especially to Maria Jose, that he knows something without actually coming out and saying the exact words. Rafa, a poor art critic who was invited into the group for the amusement he provides on so many different levels, truly has antipathy for his so-called friends. Included within his implication is that he would not hesitate to tell Miguel what he knows. In the process, Maria Jose and Juan have to find out what if anything Rafa truly does know. What ends up happening in this situation is affected by an incident Juan has with one of his students, Matilde Luque Carvajal, and the resulting actions and reactions from that incident.