In the not too distant future, a one-hundred-year-old man called H sails the eastern coast of England with his godson H recalls when he himself was sixteen - his godsons age - as they search for the site of H's life-altering friendship with a boy named Finn Finn lives alone on an isolated slip of land and follows no rules he spends his days swimming, fishing, and collecting driftwood for his tiny beach hut H, on the other hand, is an upper-class boarding school boy stifled by monotony and endless rules They meet by chance on the beach, and H is immediately awed by (and jealous of) Finns way of life They strike up an unlikely friendship but the gap between their lives becomes difficult to bridge, and before long the idyll that nurtured their relationship is shattered by heart-wrenching scandal