How do you cope when, overnight, you discover you never really knew the person you loved the most? This is the crisis facing Sheela Marker, a Sikh woman confronted with a shocking revelation about her Parsi husband, Cyrus. Her response is to hide what happened, but the secret weighs so heavily on her that a year later she attempts to kill herself by jumping off a cliff in Mahabaleshwar, a hill station near Bombay. Her attempt is scuppered by Clarissa and Max Alexander, an English couple who have been touring India. Sheela’s burgeoning friendship with the couple allows her finally to reveal the truth about Cyrus. But with that friendship she also finds the freedom to discover herself—and change her life—in a way she could never have imagined . . .