Hannah Marshall never thought she'd return to her west coast hometown of Linton, riddled with exhausted coal mines and permanently overhung with rain clouds. Her degree and her job in an international auction house were her ticket out of Linton's faded Georgian splendour, and she escaped gladly. But now, ten years later, Hannah is back, for reasons she won't discuss, to find little seems to have changed. It's still rainy, her mother Fran is still fighting social injustice, and her bewitching grandmother Dora is still ruling the circle of ladies who dominate the town. Seeing Linton through an adult's eyes, Hannah begins to make out a complicated web of old grudges and secrets - and the definite air of scandal that surrounds her turbulent family. What is Dora's real connection with the rich Musgrave sisters, who brought her up in the big villa next door? Why does she refuse to discuss her childhood? And why is Fran so desperate to know? As Hannah faces up to her own demons, she's forced to dig into the family's past and confront the hidden truths that haunt her family and Linton itself.