Bob, an average Joe of about 30, is standing as god-father to his friend, Geoff's, child. Women joke, 'He'll be next!' but Bob is happy enough as a bachelor until he meets Beata, a beautiful Irish colleen. Beata is married to Bob's colleague, Stirling, a wealthy man, twice her age. The games-playing by which their marriage catches fire traps Bob into an unfulfilling, platonic relationship with Beata. Things come to a head at a party put on by Geoff, where Bob is left moaning in sexual frustration in front of a roomful of office colleagues.Bob goes as an aid-worker to Angola 'because he's heard of it' - the place where Diana did her walk against land-mines. Despite its great wealth in oil and diamonds, corruption surrounding the long civil war makes this 'the worst place in the world to be a child.' Bob joins a bush-hospital, where he becomes attached to Mine-da, a toddler whose foot has been hacked off with a machete 'so that he won't fight for the other side.' Beata sends a Fortnum's hamper at Christmas. Bob becomes a surrogate father to Mine-da. A Portuguese nurse, Marie-Elisabeth, falls in love with him. She sings Fado to him - the Portuguese fate-song. She becomes pregnant. They decide to marry, in front of a stunning waterfall. Marie-Elisabeth is blown up by a land-mine as she is delivering polio vaccine. Bob returns with her body to Portugal, to realize that this woman, whom he did not love, had been somebody's sister, somebody's child.Back in England, he finds a cheap room near the railway. He tries not to see Beata yet seems to be dragged to return to their old haunts. Stirling has left the firm. Bob stands gazing at Beata's house, not even sure if she still lives there. When he does visit, she is alone - Stirling is in hospital, having a prostate operation. Bob, who has learnt to drive in Angola, sets out to drive Beata to the hospital. They end up in his room, making love for the first time, to the accompaniment of scraping and whistling as a man puts up a new poster on the side of their bedroom wall. Stirling tries to win his wife back with a diamond crucifix. 'You're showing me your wealth in the symbol of suffering and poverty!' Stirling gives the diamond crucifix to a tramp, who exchanges it for a hit of cocaine. Beata gives birth to Bob's child but dies of a haemorrhage. This time the christening is that of Bob's baby. Bob takes his new daughter back to Angola and Mine-da, holding her up to the plane window: 'There's a whole big world out there!'