In his early teens, Mehran moves from Karachi, the rainless place of his childhood to London, the rainy city his father has always loved. At the age of twenty-three, he leaves his job in a bank to return to university, where he meets the charismatic Riccarda - nearly ten years older than him, vivacious and enigmatic. Their relationship, which shades from friendship into love, will last a lifetime. In his thirties, when life doesn't quite go according to plan, Mehran becomes involved with Marvi, passionate, displaced and damaged, and has to choose between the demands of a relationship and the solitude that his burgeoning poetic imagination demands.