My name is Adrian Shaw. At thirty-eight, I still don’t know whether what I once believed about love was naivety or simply the only dignified illusion I had. I only know that I spent enough years trying to see it as something grand, and in the end I came to see it lower down, closer to the skin, dirtier and more real.

The story begins with Lena, although really it should begin with myself, because that was the problem from the first moment.