Damages. For a discussion of the legal concept of damages, refer to that article.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The first person narrator of the novel is Dr Stephen Fleming (Irons in the movie), a medical doctor turned politician whose promotion from MP to cabinet member is imminent. Just then Fleming is casually introduced to his grown-up son's enigmatic girlfriend Anna (Binoche) and helplessly falls for her. For as long as it lasts, Martyn, his son, has no idea that his father is having an extra-marital affair with his girlfriend (and later fiancée), and Anna does not seem to mind being a young man's partner and simultaneously his father's lover and object of desire. Fleming enjoys a brief period of sexual bliss meeting Anna in various European cities and having sex with her in unlikely places. Eventually, she buys them a small flat in central London where they meet on a regular basis.
One day Martyn happens to get hold of that address and, curious, goes there to investigate. He climbs up a flight of stairs to the top floor, opens the unlocked door to the apartment, and is shocked to see his father making love to his fiancée. Dazed and utterly confused, he tumbles backwards, hits the low banister and falls down the stairwell. Fleming runs down the stairs completely naked, finding Martyn dead, sprawled out on the ground floor. He kneels on the floor and clutches Martyn's body to him until the police arrive. In the final scene, we see Fleming, stripped of his political office and living abroad as a recluse, sitting in his solitary room staring at an oversized photograph on the wall of himself with Anna and Martyn.
Fatalism was present among the ancient Stoics, and it pervades much of the thought of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.
Fatalism is in general the view which holds that all events in the history of the world, and, in particular, the actions and incidents which make up the story of each individual life, are determined by fate.
Fatalism in general has been inclined to overlook immediate antecedents and to dwell rather upon remote and external causes as the agency which somehow moulds the course of events.
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