Every night, before he cuts the engine and lets the boat drift, Guy writes the diary of the man he should have been - of a husband with his wife and their young daughter; of a new family that may not have been perfect but who were, at least, together.

It is May 1945 and as church bells ring out Victory in Europe over the Norfolk saltmarshes, Goose's daughter Lil is born. But as Lil enters Goose's world, her father leaves it, in a makeshift boat bound - or so the story goes - for Germany, his home. 40 years later it is Lil's son, Pip, who begins to make sense of his family's fragmented history.