The Second World War. London. Gregory Swift returns to his home to find it destroyed by an air raid. His wife is dead. Travelling by train to Manchester to stay with his sister, he encounters a woman and boy. A series of surreal events unravel as Swift's mind becomes more and more fevered and reality harder to define. As the vertiginous atmosphere develops, the pieces of Swift's memory forge to produce an even more horrific reality - he had a son, is he alive or dead? Who was the lost boy he met on the train? What happened to Swift in the unaccounted-for days in a mental institution? And will the woman help him find his way back to sanity by kick-starting his memory?. Intense, dark and unsettling, this novel which confronts the psychosis of fear with a rare energy and insight.