Over the Edwardian summer of 1905 at Eastbourne on England's south coast, seventeen-year-old Alice met and fell under the spell of the composer Claude Debussy. Seeking anonymity, Debussy and his new mistress had chosen the English seaside resort as temporary refuge from Paris and the scandal of their own making. Some sixty years later, Alice's career as an actress ended, she visits for the first time the city of the man who so beguiled her in her youth. With her companion, Alex, a young man of raw musical talent, she tracks the Paris haunts of the sensual composer whose influence she has never fully escaped. What teacher and pupil discover blurs the boundaries of music, love and desire.