Adrift in Berlin and with no desire to return home to Mexico, Tatiana tries to distance herself from the city's past. Yet the phantoms of Berlin are more alive to her than the people she passes on her daily walks. When she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian Doktor Weiss, her life in Berlin becomes more complex.

Marie's job as a museum guard at the National Gallery in London offers her the quiet life she always wanted. But amid the hushed corridors of the Gallery surge currents of history and violence. After nine years there, Marie begins to feel the tug of restlessness. A decisive change comes in the form of a winter trip to Paris, where, with the arrival of an uninvited guest and an unexpected encounter, her carefully contained world is torn apart.