Charlotte Lawrence, widowed at thirty-four, decides to return to all things pre-Peter, and that means moving back to the Cheshire village of her childhood.

It also means exchanging a clinical company flat for the pretty but overgrown garden of Ivy Cottage and the constant attentions of her interfering sister Hilary.

Most of all it means Alex, Ivy Cottage's drop-dead gorgeous-tenant, with whom Hilary is determined Charlotte should find love anew, and whose charming exterior hides his own secret tragedy ...