Cleo Byng and Prue Pagan are good friends who could not be more different. Prue, brought up by a zealously religious aunt, is an innocent and inclined to be self-effacing. Cleo, raised by her artist mother, is extrovert, street-wise and bent on having fun - preferably with men. Now, having left school, they both take joliday jobs in the same village in northern England; Prue to help Lady Mountjay at the castle, Cleo to work at Midwinter Hall for a world-famous cellist. But despite the apparent social fluency of affairs between castle, hall and village, nothing and nobody are quite what they seem, and before the summer is out, Prue is not the only one wise in the ways of the world.