The Haunt family have gone and done it. On an impulse, Maude, her husband Horatio and their two small children have left their tiny London terrace for the sunflower fields and the vie rustique of Southern France. Up the road, the scruffy Hotel Marronnier is about to change hands again. Daffy Fielding has fallen in love with the place and has dragged her husband to France to persuade him to buy it.
Which he does - before heading straight back home to his mistress. Can timid Daffy make a life for herself alone ? Watching over ail the new arrivals is the glamorous, predatory, eternally bored Lady Emma Rankin. From her exquisite château nearby, she pulls strings to bring the new wives together. But is it Horatio, rather than Maude, who she really wants to sip Sancerre with ? Or is her eye on the gorgeous local builder, the only one of them ail who is party to the Haunt family's explosive secret ?