At the Cannes Film Festival - where Lina has been invited to view a film, Puccini: Lust for Life, on which an old flame of hers from the world of opera has functioned as executive producer - Bingham finds he is not entitled to an accreditation badge.

Bidding adieu to his wife who he leaves with her former lover, Bingham wanders to a patch of grass opposite Cafe Potiniere on La Croisette, where he noticed a group of locals playing boules. While he watches, Bingham gets into conversation with a young boy, ill at ease, playing with a toy car. The boy is in the company of an old woman and it soon becomes clear to Bingham that the boy doesn't speak a word of French and the woman doesn't speak a word of the boy's own language, English.

Perturbed by his concern for the boy, who he sees as vulnerable, and eager to put his mind at rest, Bingham follows the couple through the back streets of Cannes, where they briefly visit a cafe, La Canape, run by Isabelle Couchet. The bar is rundown but comfortable and Bingham begins to feel at home among the locals; an old man, who he later follows home, a prostitute and a sailor. He leaves, having roused the anger and suspicions of the patronne.

His subsequent search takes him further into the private lives of the people of Cannes; he reacquaints himself with the old man, the sailor and the prostitute and meets her pimp; he finds the boy's father, his mistress and mother among others and, eventually, his search takes him to the English Lake District where Bingham faces one of those decisions in his life that he should have found difficult.

This is the seventh Bingham novel and one in which we learn more about Lina and her life as an opera singer before she met Bingham.