When novelist Jake Conley regains consciousness after a serious head injury, he discovers he's affected by a rare condition: synaesthesia. This not only gives his brain heightened psychic powers, but also affects his behavior. Nationally prominent after discovering the tomb of King Aldfrith and writing a bestseller, Jake is in a world of trouble. After his cross-wired brain responds to psychometry in his childhood home, he sees his mother who had died young, and decides to go on holiday to the Cotswolds to discover the curse of the Red Horse Vale.