Colin Barrow was born in Kent. He studied physics at Oxford and the University of Florida and received a Ph.D. from London University. He has travelled widely and has lived in Jamaica, France, Switzerland, Germany and the US. The author currently lives in Germany. For this EGS Assembly, he has served as a Convener of Session PS11.

Three men on a summer morning in 1986. Laurie Craven, a young schoolmaster, has been drifting in the sea for several hours as the result of a sailing accident. He is almost unconscious when he has a vision of a beautiful girl, a stranger to him who looks at him tenderly as if she had known him from time immemorial. Rescued by some French fishermen he returns to his school at the end of the summer vacation haunted by the memory of the girl's face. Richard Hollies, a Royal Air Force bomber pilot during the war, the day after the funeral of his beloved French wife, his life shattered by her death. A grey-haired man taking an early breakfast in his apartment, watching the dawn creep over the city below and reflecting upon the hopelessness of his life. Several months afterwards, the paths of these three people cross in Paris, where Laurie has come to work having tired of the unsympathetic attitudes prevailing at his school. He meets Richard Hollies by chance and discovers that his father was in the same aircrew as Hollies during the war. Later, he meets Richard's niece and immediately identifies her with the girl he saw in his vision when he was on the point of drowning. But, unknown to Laurie, a sinister shadow hangs over him, threatening his future. Richard Hollies has his suspicions although they seem too fantastic to believe. Nevertheless, he decides to follow these up and try to protect Laurie.