The day she stopped loving her children … So begins the story of a woman who realises that what gave her life meaning no longer does. She goes in search of, and finds the man she loved as a student and who loved her in return. Did she make the wrong decision back then? A son wants to know at long last who his father is and go on a journey with him. A man with an incurable illness arranges a summer with his family to take leave of life while it is still beautiful. A man on a plane hears the confession of his fellow passenger's life – or is it all a pack of lies? Why does a young man and father try to keep his successful wife hidden from the world? What compels a lover to keep lying to the woman he loves only to lose her- and himself in his own lies? And how do you loosen the ropes that attach you to your old life when late-flowering love holds out the promise of a new life? A gentle revealing of the lies by which we live is at the crux of these unerringly clear, beautiful short stories laced with melancholy.