Annie Park's wife, Issy, a famous author, died twelve months ago. In her Will, she left instructions that Annie relocate with Issy's teenage children from Hackney to her childhood home in the rural village of Colthwaite, Cumbria. Despite her misgivings, Annie complies because she loved her wife so deeply.
A collection of motley villagers; a dilapidated Georgian manor; a locked library; hidden diaries; a missing relative; the creepy Fell with its strange pheasant enclosures and shepherd's hut; and the reappearance of Patrick, Issy's peculiar ex-husband and father of their children; the Dillane family skeletons are coming out of the closet faster than Annie can say, "Take me back to London". Annie's grief at Issy's death slowly twists into doubt at her wife's love, and Issy's motives for sending them to Colthwaite in the first place.
Are Annie and the children in danger? What is Elizabeth up to in her work shed? Is elderly neighbour Vincent Prime a friend or foe, and why do so many young women from the village's past look so similar?
Or could all this be simply Annie's paranoid thinking, her fish-out-of-water knee-jerk response to rural custom? Perhaps she should just assimilate, relax and focus on her writing. Or perhaps not...
