Clodagh was nineteen when her parents packed her off to college and a relative's house in north London. Two years earlier, a tragic death on a hydro tower had marked her life. She was blamed for it and that was why her family was sending her away.
Her new home, Maida Vale, was not what she imagined. There were mansions like Italian palaces and the towers of a Victorian metropolis. And her relatives were not suited to looking after a wayward and lonely niece.
Clodagh's lonely existence in Maida Vale is broken by a chance encounter with Michael Silverman, or Silver, as everyone called him. Generous, kind, and thoughtful, he played host to a strange crew of drop-outs in his apartment at the top of his parents' house. Their pleasure was to roam the rooftops. It was a happy, heady time until the moment when, on a trek fifty feet above the street, they looked into a window and saw a scene that would lead to another great tragedy in Clodagh's life.