Rudy, a British lawyer of Italo-Somali origin and a writer manque, will soon discover that nothing is what it seems. His wife has dumped him for a fat cat. Then it is a coup de foudre with Paola, the Tuscan girl with a touch of Renaissance glamour who showed up at his office for legal advice as a victim of brutal harassment: but he cannot tell if she too feels for him, or is still bewitched by her psychopathic persecutor, or has had a fling with his own father. He cherishes the memory of his mother, who killed herself, but Rudy wants to know why: because his father walked out on her, or because she loved his uncle, a physician turned herdsman who has downshifted to the countryside? Everybody comes up with a different version of their own biography, and the weight of the uncertainties makes it tough for him to choose between trusting Paola to start a new life with him and quitting law to write a psychological novel. A novel inspired by the conflicting accounts he has been given.