William Caldicott's life is complicated enough. A writer and a father of two, he is about to start divorce proceedings when a cryptic letter, together with a key, arrives from his estranged younger brother James. A house in a remote French village can be his, with three years' rent paid in advance. William accepts the challenge and travels to James's former home. Gradually he begins to unravel the complexities of his brother's strange life and to discover things that, even as a writer, he could never have remotely imagined.