Rebecca, bruised from an unhappy love affair, is flattered to be asked to write the life story of distinguished Dame Tilda Franklin. Tilda was born in a remote Fenland village, the illegitimate daughter of the local squire and a maid in The Big House. It was Tilda's misfortune to fall in love with handsome, devil-may-care Daragh Canavan, and to be betrayed by him. As Rebecca delves deeper into Tilda's life, and as the events of the past send ghostly echoes to the present, parallels with her own experience begin to emerge. When she is drawn into a family history of loves and tragedies almost too painful to write about, her involvement with the family becomes more overwhelming than she could ever have imagined.

A brilliant successor to The Winter House, multi-layered and fascinating in the portrayal of the two periods it describes, Some Old Lover's Ghost is a triumph of storytelling.