Widow Rhona Barton who adores flowers and living in what was a mining village out side of Sheffield is pursued by divorcee Steven Boult an ex miner whose made it quite clear to the community that Rhona will one day be his bride. She has an intense loathing of the man and showed it the last time they met. Filling up with petrol for a journey to see her daughter in Camberley early one morning, there is a confrontation with Boult and the cashier in the garage on the pretence of ringing the police, enables her to continue her journey. Rhona arrives and takes a walk along a country lane that passes the gates of the old Manor. She steps inside the newly painted gates to smell the camelias, when she is disturbed by Ben Whitfield pushing a wheelbarrow. She assumes he is a gardener but he"s the millionaire owner of the Manor which is in the process of being refurbished. Both realize even then there is an attraction and after meeting over the weekend Rhona returns home to sell her property so she can return to Camberley. Her lifelong friend tells her that Boult has been arrested and his family are blaming her. Before she can sell her house, Boult is released and a sequence of events takes place with the death of the cashier and Rhona and her friend Sal who is driving Rhona"s Mini is pursued by Boult in a stolen car Rhona suffers a loss of memory due the a blow on her head as she is thrown out onto the bank and stumbles away as both cars enter a swollen river, both drivers drowning, and leaving everybody assuming that Rhona is somewhere in the river. She is found slumped on a bench in Blackpool by Ruth Donnell who has had a a horrific upbringing in Glasgow. She takes her home which is a caravan and looks after her for seven weeks. A smell from a bunch of flowers reawaken her memory, and finally she returns to live her life with Ben in the lodge in the Manor grounds.