It is England in the Jubilee summer of 2012. Three couples living in different parts of the country await the celebrations with varying degrees of enthusiasm, hostility, or indifference. Derek Bailey, in his 60s, has a secret past, linked to a tragic event that happened 24 years before. If he is ever to come to terms with that event, he needs an answer to a question that has nagged at him all this time, so he starts to write a series of letters to Marcus, a young man whom he has never met