Mylie O'Farrell is 20 years old. By day he works as a health care assistant in a psychiatric unit in London. Off duty, he indulges his interest in music, girls and wild nights on the town with his friends, Janus and Rich, who share a ramshackle house in Westminster they call 'The Palace'. Everything changes when ex-army officer Harold Edward Severn "Harry" is admitted to the Unit under a Compulsory Detention Order after purportedly trying to strangle his wife, Muriel. Harry, who is suffering from melancholia, has no visitors so Mylie takes a special interest in the cantankerous old man. Through a series of stormy if humour-laden encounters, the young man and old man become friends, each allowing the other a glimpse into the deepest and most intimate secrets of their lives. This is also the story of the women in their lives, of Muriel and Elizabeth, Tabi and Pfion. As, little by little, a surrogate father-son relationship grows, Mylie realises that Harry is harbouring a secret terror and Mylie sets about bringing this into the open so that his friend can be set free. At times raucously comical, it is also suffused with great joy, sorrow, and a haunting sense of beauty -- a remarkable story of the redemptive power of love.