Clashes in the community of Aldminster Cathedral are fueled by a need for funds to save the building. Demarcation lines and loyalties are set. Clerical politics become as underhand as the secular variety. Personal lives come under strain.
Enmities become more intense as the various schemes to raise money for the building work are advanced and then changed; trust is in very short supply as people are shown to be acting dishonestly .
The head teacher's wife returns and re-energizes the campaign against the Dean's schemes. At a personal level, stresses increase still further and people grow more unhappy. A plan to make money from music takes shape.
The choral CD is successful but other plans are not, and the double-crossing intensifies. Some people are driven to extremes of behaviour amidst an increasingly febrile atmosphere.
Many in the Cathedral community find that their lives have been changed for ever by the events of the past few months. The Cathedral carries on, but nothing will be the same again for those who work and live around it.