Charlotte Lawrence, widowed at 34, 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 apartment 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.