Diana owns a bookshop, is thirty-something and single again after a long relationship. The Brahms Requiem was once her favourite piece of music. Now she cannot listen to it without it stirring painful memories of her old love. She is determined to supplant the old memories with something new and, in her quest for a memory to superimpose on the past, joins the team intending to open the Academy of Forward Literature at Hassocks Hall . . .