This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end.

As snow begins to fall outside, two strangers meet by chance in a bar. She is trying to make sense of a life shaken by heartbreak and ruined dreams. He is on a desperate quest to find something he lost in his youth.

From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a nuclear bunker; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, he flits from one life to another, never able to stand still.

Extraordinary though his story is, the secret she is keeping is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them - or you - expected.

From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find our way in the world.

Barney Norris was born in Chichester in 1987 and grew up in Sussex, London and Salisbury. A graduate of the universities of Oxford and Royal Holloway, his plays are AT FIRST SIGHT (presented on tour and at Latitude Festival, 2011) and MISSING (Tristan Bates Theatre 2012), and his poetry, stories and other writings have been published in various little magazines. He is the co-artistic director of the theatre company Up In Arms (www.upinarms.org.uk), works as Max Stafford-Clark's assistant at Out of Joint, and has previously worked and trained under Bernard O'Donoghue, Andrew Motion, Jo Shapcott, Thelma Holt, Peter Gill and David Hare, and at Salisbury Playhouse, Oxford Playhouse, the Royal Court and the Bush.