They were wild in the 60s; but now they face turning sixty themselves. Miranda Meadowe decides a lonely widowhood in her crumbling, remote house is not for her. Reviving a university dream, she invites five old friends to come and join her to live, and to stave off the prospect of old age. All have their own reasons for accepting.To begin with, omens are good. They laugh, dance, drink and behave badly, as they cling to the heritage they thought was theirs for ever: power, health, stability. But the clock cannot be put back. When building work reveals an Iron Age burial site of a tribal queen, the outside world descends on the once idyllic retreat, and the isolation of the group is breached. Now the past is revealed; and the future that beckons is very different to the one they imagined.