Following the untimely death of the father he idolised, portrait painter Jacob Douglas fears that the dark shadow of his past may once again be catching up with him. But life seems to take a turn for the better when he meets Alison. She is everything Jacob ever wanted in a woman, warm, bright, funny, sexy...They look towards a bright future together and all seems perfect. So when Alison leaves abruptly one afternoon, then refuses to see him or return any of his calls, Jacob is left confused and devastated. In a desperate quest to find answers, Jacob embarks on a self-destructive and ultimately deadly course of action that takes him through the bright lights and back streets of Glasgow, over the rolling green countryside of Northern Ireland, climaxing amidst the ominous, feral beauty of Loch Lomond. It is a journey of rebirth and death, of excess and obsession in which the divisions between reality and dark fantasy become increasingly distorted.