A brainy but unpopular college student awakes after a party to discover he has slept with three girls. Now he must discover who put him there and why before any of them is found to be pregnant.

SYNOPSIS:

Tim Weston (early 20s) is an outstanding geology student at the start of the final year of his studies at one of the top universities in the country, Downham University. He is also a loner, and has grown even more anti-social since his girlfriend Amy was killed in a car crash the previous summer. He unexpectedly receives an invitation to a party, which he reluctantly accepts as he needs the money he is being offered simply for attending. At it he is given a one-to-one meeting with fellow student Edward Mason, the son of Arthur Mason who owns a large, and environmentally unethical, oil company. Edward offers him a prestigious job, but Tim refuses saying he could never condone the company’s practices. Edward leaves Tim alone in a room with two beautiful identical twins, Cara and Leanne (early 20s), who, catching him off-guard, flatter him and ply him with champagne. He awakes the following morning to discover he has slept with the twins and a third girl (early 20s), who he briefly met at the party and is now lying in the bed with them. After the twins leave, the third girl tells him not to recognize her if they meet again.

Tim thinks that Edward may be trying to blackmail him to join the company, but is inclined to lie low and hope that the whole thing blows over. His best friend Jez, however, says that the Masons are dangerous so he needs to stay one step ahead of them. A professor in the university’s geology department shows Tim a photograph he has been sent anonymously of Tim in bed with the girls, saying he couldn’t care less personally but that Tim should know what is out there. A message on the back also suggests the girls had not taken precautions. Tim realizes they could know in as little as two weeks if they are pregnant. He therefore resolves to find out what this is all about before they know for certain, at which point they may have him cornered.

Tim discovers that Cara and Leanne, although students at Downham, work in a strip club, and goes there to find them. Cara is furious that he has come and gives little away. Edward invites Tim for a weekend with his family at their country house, and Tim agrees believing that to get to the bottom of the situation he has to be on the inside. The start of his stay is surprisingly enjoyable as Arthur’s wife (in fact, his fourth) is lovely, and Arthur (70s or 80s) proves a far gentler character than Tim imagined, even appearing aware of his failings in running the company. Arthur reveals that he wishes Edward to inherit the company, as his family is extremely important to him, but that he has doubts over his suitability because he knows he can be quite reckless. Arthur therefore wants Tim to join the company to be a positive influence on Edward, and for Edward to marry and have children, which he believes will bring more stability to his behavior and the company’s long-term future. Although this implies that Tim is simply being used as a pawn to further Arthur and Edward’s interests, Arthur also reveals that he has taken quite an interest in Tim from afar. As a result, Tim warms to him enough to promise that he will think about the offer.

The twins arrive at the country house but only one of them (Cara) is presented to Arthur who calls her Caroline and does not seem to realize there are two of them. Arthur also introduces Tim to Caitlin who turns out to be the third girl with whom Tim slept. Caitlin says she is taking Tim out for the evening, much to Cara and Edward’s consternation but Arthur’s delight.

On their evening out at a classy restaurant Tim initially tells Caitlin he does not trust her. She is, however, an attractive and intriguing person, and he gradually finds himself laughing and joking with her, and opening up as he tells her about Amy’s death. After they return to the country house Tim sneaks into Arthur’s office in the dead of night and finds some clinical documents, which reveal that Edward has a very low sperm count and is thus unable to father children.

Back at Downham University, Tim tells Jez that he thinks Edward set him up to sleep with the twins and Caitlin with a view to Edward marrying whoever Tim got pregnant, passing the resulting child off as his own. This way Edward can promise Arthur the stability that will secure his inheritance. When, however, Tim confronts Leanne with what he thinks, she tells him Caitlin is Arthur’s daughter, which destroys his theory as Edward could hardly marry his sister.

The police investigating Amy’s crash tell Tim they think it wasn’t an accident, and Tim wonders if there is a connection between this and the situation he now finds himself in. He therefore imagines it may be dangerous to return to the Masons’ country house, but decides to anyway as he feels a responsibility to find out what happened to Amy. He also discovers on Amy’s cell phone, which the police gave him, a photo of Caitlin and Amy together.

On his arrival at the country house, the atmosphere instantly feels more hostile than the first time he was there, and Arthur explodes when Tim says he still needs more time to think about the offer. Tim tries to leave the house, but all of the doors and windows are locked. The twins try to sleep with him once more as it seems they did not become pregnant before, which suggests Tim’s earlier theory was not entirely wrong. Tim, however, resists their advances and eventually cracks begin to show in the relationship between Cara and Leanne. Tim tries to exploit these to extract more information from them, but they refuse to tell him much more. It is clear to Tim, however, that there are people operating the twins who have not been straight with them. He concludes that Cara and Leanne have been duped nearly as much as he has.

That evening, Caitlin arrives at the country house and comes to Tim’s bedroom. He accuses her of murdering Amy, but she says she was trying to warn her, and reveals enough distress at the accusation to cast doubt in Tim’s mind. During their conversation it also transpires that Caitlin is Arthur’s adopted daughter. Caitlin tells Tim ‘they’ are onto him, without saying who ‘they’ are, and that he is in danger. She tells him to leave first thing in the morning, and until then to stay in his bedroom because if he does nothing ‘they’ may decide not to act against him.

Tim comes to the opposite conclusion that if he is to leave in the morning, he only has tonight in which to find anything out. In the dead of night he sneaks into Arthur’s study to try to look for more clues in the documents he saw before, but Edward catches him doing so. Edward does not, however, alert Arthur or anyone else, and Tim takes the opportunity to show him the photograph sent to his professor, and the letter saying Edward has a low sperm count. Edward reveals ignorance of both, saying that if someone had taken a sperm sample from him to test then he really was unaware of them doing so.

Edward says he does not wish to continue the conversation in the house, which could be bugged, so Tim agrees to go outside with him. They end up walking down to the nearby river, and step onto a luxury boat that suddenly speeds away as Arthur appears on it.

Inside the boat as it hurtles through the water, Tim tells Arthur about what Edward set up at his party. Tim also says, however, that he has worked out that Arthur knew what Edward was planning to do. Arthur thus tried to engineer events from there by making the twins (he knew there were two) believe they stood a chance of getting pregnant by Tim, and marrying Edward by pretending the child was his. However, they stood no chance of doing so as Caitlin had been sneaking the pill into their food so the only person who could get pregnant was her. Tim asserts that Arthur is so determined for Tim to join the company that he will employ any method possible, including tying him in with Caitlin and removing anything else he might have in his life. In other words, Arthur killed Amy. Arthur vehemently denies the accusation, pointing out that Amy died in Tim’s car, and he could hardly have known that she would be in it and not Tim.

At this the boat stops, and Edward, Arthur and Tim go onto the deck to see what has happened. They realize the driver is Caitlin who has overheard their entire conversation through an earpiece. Caitlin asserts that Tim has got it all wrong and that Arthur did not kill Amy. Suddenly Tim realizes that, as it was Tim’s car, whoever killed Amy meant to murder him. He concludes that it was Edward, who saw Tim as a threat to his position as heir to the company and wanted to eliminate him. When this failed, and Arthur found out, both attempted to bring him into the company as a way of embracing him, and ensuring he never found out the truth. Now that Tim has discovered it, however, Edward moves to push him overboard into the freezing cold water, while Caitlin tries to stop him from doing so. As the ‘tug of war’ between the two continues, Edward pleads with Arthur to help him, and he eventually agrees reasoning that family is family. As Arthur exerts himself trying to help pull Tim to the side of the boat, he has a heart attack. In the moment of confusion that follows, Caitlin and Tim manage to wrestle Edward to the ground and sit on him, thus immobilising him, but this leaves them powerless to help Arthur. They call for an ambulance, but it is too late.

Tim waits for Caitlin outside Arthur’s funeral, but when he manages to speak with her she explains that Edward will inherit the company, meaning it will continue in its unethical ways. Although Arthur was considering changing his will to leave the company to Caitlin, he had not done so by the time he died. Edward may be heading to jail, but with a good lawyer he’ll be out in five years, so he only needs to find someone to run the company for that time, as State law rules that no felony can deprive someone of their assets or positions. Caitlin further explains that she was trying to ensure a positive outcome in which Arthur named her as his successor, she recruited Tim and together they created an ethical company. On the night she was on the boat, she had engineered events so that she and Arthur would be alone for hours, giving her the chance to finish persuading him. She blames her failure to secure the important change on Tim interfering and having to see her as a temptress and femme fatale when her intentions were honest. She even explains that, though she was in the bed, she never slept with Tim as she had too much respect for him to take advantage of him, a respect that he has not reciprocated in the way he has viewed her. As Caitlin walks away Tim is left to contemplate how he has been left with nothing, compared with what might have been.

THE THIRD GIRL