For Olivia Ozanne, middle-aged, divorced children's writer, it should have been a simple holiday trip to Moscow to visit her journalist daughter Caitlin. But when she meets the man called Volodya at the flower market everything changes. Not just because of what happens between them, but because through him she meets his landladies, elderly sisters known as the Brown Aunty and the Grey Aunty.

Then Olivia is shocked to discover that the Brown Aunty is not Russian at all, but an Englishwoman who has been living in Moscow for the last seventy years. All of a sudden Olivia is plunged into a strange world she does not understand and does not want to be part of -- and yet she feels she must try to help Martha. And what of Volodya? Having found each other, are they now doomed to spend the rest of their lives apart? It is up to Olivia to make sure things work out -- for everyone.