Seventeen years ago Angela Carr made the difficult decision to abort an unwanted child. Seventeen years later the child's father, Christopher Moore, cannot quite forget his grief and sense of loss. Living alone on a modern housing estate with only his books and a bull terrier for companions, Christopher has turned his back on both the world and his troubled past. When out walking his dog one grey November morning, Christopher makes a shocking discovery in a ditch. What he finds instantly resurrects fantasies of the lost child, Catherine, he still aches to know and to love. He seeks out Angela and returns to her life burning to know the truth about the day she put paid to his hopes of becoming a father.
In the course of a few days, Angela, now married to Gregory Lowood and still childless, and Christopher, the confirmed bachelor, rekindle a passionate relationship which revives the haunting mistakes of the past and contains the seed of a dangerous new life together. A chance encounter between Angela and Christopher and two young parents, Tamara and Crackle, seems at first to promise only ironic mockery of their barrenness. But, fatefully, it turns out that more is on offer.
