Acclaimed as one of the world’s leading ballerinas, Mim was forced to give up dancing after a tragic accident. A friend who ran a successful stage school persuaded her to join the business, knowing that her name would attract more pupils. Min accepted the offer when it was agreed that the dancing classes would be her own special province.

Now, nearly twenty-five years later, history is repeating itself. Daisy, Mim’s protégée and most talented former pupil, us suffering from injuries and she too will have to rethink her career. To give her time to consider her future, Mim arranges for Daisy to holiday in Cornwall, in the strange and beautiful house on the edge of Bodmin Moor where Mim's brother, Roly Carradine, is living.

He lifted him down and watched him patter importantly – if rather stiffly – out into the yard, followed by Bevis who went to look at the newcomer sitting rather anxiously in the back of Roly’s estate car. For the last few years, since he’d announced his early retirement and closed his photographic studio in London, Roly had been fostering dogs for the local retriever rescue society. Bevis and Uncle Bernard were quite accustomed to dealing with a procession of misfits from broken relationships, bewildered puppies abandoned as soon as their charm wore thin a few weeks after Christmas, and faithful companions whose owners had died or been moved into residential accommodation. Here they stayed until homes could be found for them.