Faced with the task of producing a written composition, fifteen-year-old Rosie reflects on the time when, five years previously, she and her family inherited and took up residence in their most beloved aunt's grand house along the south Cornish coast. Rosie's twin brother, Simon, is the one totally mesmerised by the village's age-old gossip relating to the goings-on in their new home some two hundred years ago but it is Rosie, haunted by dreams, a particularly nasty nightmare and a very strange scent which manifests in various locations, who unwittingly, along with the assistance of her family, eventually unravels the truth behind the local hearsay. Who is responsible for the dreams and reoccurring fragrance? Only by numerous conversations with their aunt's old village friends and by accidentally tuning into a particular TV programme do the children reach their unbelievable and totally unexpected conclusion.