On a thundery evening in London four apparently unrelated incidents occur. Travelling down on an escalator, Clovis sees a sensless figure sprawled on the upward escalator. From indecision, embarrassment or cowardice, he does nothing, but the encounter will has its conse-quences. After a violent quarrel, and a last bitter pizza with her former lover, Inez, wandering down Charing Cross Road, sees the face of a woman she once knew on the book jacket and decides to search for her. Out in the suburbs, Alfred, waiting to take his place at art school, knocks on the door of Walnut Tree Cottage and, when a woman answers whom he believes to be the widow of a famous artist, asks to draw her. Soon afterwards, he is fleeing naked into the rain. And in Tivoli Street, when the storm breaks in earnest, Nancy and Rod are forced to take shelter next door with the Lees, whose home improvements they have hitherto despised. As the story unfolds, in London and New York, the links between these diverse chatacters are revealed. Some connections are fragile and destined to be broken, others prove indissoluble.