Abbas has never told anyone about his past - before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life in Norwich with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him bedbound and unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.<br/><br/>Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world, yet while they were both born in England, they cannot shake a sense of apartness. When Abbas falls ill, they return home reluctantly to confront the dark silences of their father and the secret he has been hiding from them all.