When Jim Smith buys Paradise Farm, he hopes that a deep engagement with nature will help him to forget his recent London woes. Jim floated his company on the stock market but then found himself marginalised and forced to sell his shares; he enters rural life determined to salve his wounded pride. He inherits John, the ubiquitous surly old local who has worked on the land for countless years, and together they fill the place with livestock.

While Jim enjoys the occasional moment of arcadian bliss, his new life is hampered by a ghost who visits him in his dreams. Jim becomes convinced it is the spirit of Jean Thinne, a 1960s starlet who once lived at Paradise Farm with her entrepreneur husband, Charles Lampard. Jean went