Just when she has resigned herself to being alone long-term, Marina Ffrench, a widow in her forties, meets a man and falls in love all over again. A midlife relationship, she thinks, will be straightforward — kids reared, careers established, mortgages almost paid off . . . However, midlife passion carries excess baggage. Luke, her man, may have a gorgeous villa on the Italian Lakes, but he also has a pious and eccentric Irish mammy, an Italian ex-lover who is as invasive as dry rot, and a son embroiled in a suspect engagement. And Marina has to admit that her own life is just as complicated — and getting more so by the day, given the number of stray souls and ghosts from the past that are turning up in her Cork home. Gradually, she and Luke come to see that love second time around is hard work. But in their efforts to find a happy ending for everyone, unwittingly they are creating a disaster that may destroy their shared future and the happiness of both families . . .