Eight years before the story begins, Marcus Vine is summoned by his best friend, Lorraine Fowler, on a torrential Sunday afternoon to witness the second half of an amateur football match. Her new boyfriend, Tom Baxter, is playing, and she needs Marcus' approval because she firmly believes that Tom is the one. 

On his way to Lausanne, Switzerland, for a reunion with old university friends, Robert Farrell feels compelled to disembark when the coach he is travelling in stops at a small village in the northeast of France. Finding lodgings in a remote farmhouse, he encounters Alfie, the ghost of a young English soldier from the Great War, who repeatedly appears in his room at night. Neither of them understands why until Robert begins to do some research. He soon discovers that their destinies are linked, and only they can help to redeem each other.