Kitty Crozier first laid eyes on Virgil Florescu, a dissident poet who swam across the Danube to escape Ceausescu's Romania, in the hospital. She woke up after surgery to find a stranger sitting beside her bed gazing at her. He just smiled at her, stood and left the room. She next saw him in London’s Green Park picking up litter from the grass with a long spike. So begins the most important, most demanding, most exhilarating relationship of Kitty's life. As their love for each other deepens, their previous lives and very different families reveal themselves to be oddly connected.