Pippin Pearmain is enjoying the busiest week of her life. As a child star turned jobbing actor, she's used to tight deadlines and patient waiting around, but this return to the world of stage and film after ten years of unofficial retirement is a whole new experience. Filming Half-Life of the Lost would be enough for most sixty-something women, but Pip also has to attend the world premiere of her ballet, Delphine, and dance the principal role in her second ballet, Queen of the Clowder. A grey leotard with a stocking tail and Alice-band ears is fine for a costume, but Pip ends up with a glorious silver crown. For someone who doesn't do jewellery, she seems to be accumulating quite a lot! She has new friendships to cultivate and, as the sunset falls on her most challenging film role ever, she has a strange encounter that's been fifty years in the making.

Back home in quiet Jellico Bay, Pip joins a new friend in a mad expedition to her childhood home to fulfil a promise. Along with her film co-star and two peculiar cats, Pip creeps into the garden under a full moon…