Rosamunde Pilcher: In love with a butler

Anne struggles to the brink of exhaustion to keep her small vegetable farm going. After her husband Harry has left her to join his new mistress in London, she has to take care of everything on her own. Including her teenage daughter Jamie, who is a talented footballer, and her mother Molly, who is fed up with her life as a hard-working farmer.

But suddenly an unexpected gift arrives at the door: John, Lady Sally’s butler. She is Molly’s sister, who had broken off contact with the family after her marriage to the diplomat Lord Trevenna. Lady Sally, now a widow, wants to borrow her butler for six weeks. Anne is strictly against it. But Molly, who feels that her sister has lived the life she should have lived, wants to make the most of the butler’s services.

John takes his job very seriously. With his discreet manner he gets to the bottom of the little secrets in the family and tries to help unobtrusively. Jamie is secretly in love with her best friend Tara and Molly tries to hide her progressive rheumatoid arthritis, which limits her in her daily work.

Anne feels John’s interference in her private and professional affairs is an encroachment and asks John to leave. But he refuses because he has a secret “special assignment”. He is supposed to reconcile the two quarrelling sisters. And there is a second one: Molly orders John to set Anne up with her neighbour Nick. John is in a dilemma. On the one hand he has to successfully advise Nick in dating matters, on the other hand he feels more and more attracted to Anne.