Mary Lindsay is a born-and-bred Londoner who has enjoyed her city lifea prestigious job, and friends with whom she takes in the pleasures of theatre, art and music. But fleeting memories of a childhood visit to her fathers elderly cousin out in the country are revived with the news that the woman has willed her home, the Laurels, to Mary. She makes an uncharacteristically sudden and life-changing decision to leave London for the country. The gradual interweaving of her understanding of herself,