Frank Walsh is a young teacher of English to foreign students. While teaching on a summer school in Dublin, he falls in love with one of the students, a French girl called Danielle, and they embark on a passionate affair. Frank lives in London with Rania, a Guyanese girl who was also one of his students in the college where he teaches. They are married, but only in Muslim rites, as she is from a Muslim family. Frank is not religious, though he was once training to be a Catholic priest, and ag