'Memories and the need to decide whether she is in love with Peter Grant, drew Sally Darbey back to Cornwall for the summer, although she knows that there will be hurt as well as pleasure in revisiting old haunts.
'For several years she had been going to Whitecoasts every summer to paint but the last year had ended in tragedy. The day after she had returned to London, resolved never to go to Whitecoasts again, she had learned that Philip Trethowan, the man she had loved although he was married to someone else, had drowned. Ironically, it was because he was dead that she could return. She arrives still believing that Philip's death was no more than a tragic accident but gradually the strange behaviour of the village and even of her close friends there, convinces her that there was something sinister about what happened.' (Inside dust jacket)