 After a year of self-imposed exile, a writer - Gabriel - returns to the North London house he shared with friends from school and childhood - Michael, Valerie, Alex, Anna, Eric, and Shelly. A year after the fact, they are scarred alike by the suicide of Shelly and Gabriel s subsequent flight, and when the blackout of a winter storm keeps Gabriel from leaving, all are forced to spend one last night together, resolving the issues and watching the slow breakdown of relationships put on hold. In flashback, the events of a year before are seen, even as current friendships and love left hanging at the point of change are catalyzed and reformed by fear, by rivalry, by the anger that lingers after Shelly s death, and by the betrayal revealed in the affair that Gabriel and Valerie undertook in the aftermath of Shelly s death.