Molly Pargeter is a forty-something wife and mother of three girls, who leads a stable but dull life in 1980s West London. She feels overweight and there is no passion in her relationship with her husband Hugh, who is secretly seeing another woman. For most of her life she has found escape in detective novels and books on art, especially about the fifteenth century Italian fresco painter Piero Della Francesca. Then in a newspaper's small ads Molly sees the details of a villa in Tuscany, Italy to let and after travelling to Italy to view the villa "La Felicita" she decides to take it for the family's August holiday.

Molly Pargeter es una mujer de cuarenta y tantos, madre de tres niñas, que lleva una vida estable pero aburrida en 1980 al oeste de Londres. Ya no hay pasión en su relación con su marido Hugh, que se ve en secreto con otra mujer. Durante la mayor parte de su vida Molly ha encontrado evasión en las novelas de detectives, los libros de arte y la obra del pintor italiano del siglo XV Piero della Francesca. Un día Molly ve en un periódico el anuncio de alquiler de una villa en la Toscana, y decide pasar allí sus vacaciones.