A richly textured story of love, loss and the distance between three generations of one family. The unexpected arrival of her wilful teenage granddaughter, Ruby, brings life and disorder to 82-year-old Iris Black's old house in Cairo. Ruby, driven by her fraught relationship with her own mother to run away from England, is seeking refuge with the grandmother she hasn't seen for years. An unlikely bond develops between them, as Ruby helps Iris to record her fading memories of the glittering, cosmopolitan Cairo of World War Two, and of her one true love -- the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneaux -- whom she lost to the ravages of the conflict. This long-ago love has shaped Iris's life, and, as becomes increasingly apparent, those of her daughter and granddaughter. And it is to affect them all, again, in ways they could not have imagined.