The Portobello area of West London has a rich personality vibrant brilliant in colour noisy with graffiti that approach art bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe about Portobello... Eugene Wren inherited an art gallery from his father near an arcade that now sells cashmere handmade soaps and childrens clothes. But he decided to move to a more upmarket site in Kensington Church Street. Eugene was fifty with prematurely white hair. He was perhaps too secretive for his own good. He also had an addictive personality. But he had cut back radically on his alcohol consumption and had given up cigarettes. Which was just as well considering he was going out with a doctor. For all his good intentions though there was something he didnt want her to know about... On a shopping trip one day Eugene quite by chance came across an envelope containing money. He picked it up. For some reason rather than report the matter to the police he wrote a note and stuck it up on lamppost near his house: Found in Chepstow Villas a sum of money between eighty and a hundred and sixty pounds. Anyone who has lost such a sum should apply to the phone number below. This note would link the lives of a number of very different people each with their obsessions problems and dreams and despairs. And through it all the hectic life of Portobello would bustle on.