It is the summer of 1965. Annie Cradock, the only child of exacting parents who run the village school, is an imaginative girl with a head full of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Annie whiles away the school holiday with her friends: Ollie the rag-and-bone man (and more importantly his dog); the beautiful piano-playing Mrs Clitheroe who turns Beethoven into boogie-woogie (and like Annie sees music in colour); and Annie's best friend Babette - streetwise, loyal, and Annie's one solid link with common sense. But everything changes when the village is rocked by a series of murders and the girls know something they've no intention of telling the police.

In the present day, adult Annie is a successful singing coach in a stifling marriage. Her ambitious American husband, impatient with his quirky wife, is taking a job in New York - but is she staying with him? As Annie struggles with her future, she first has to come to terms with the bizarre events of 1965.