England 1937. In the village of Blacknowle on the Dorset coast fourteen-year-old Mitzy Hatcher has endured a wild & lonely upbringing. Shunned by her neighbours the arrival of renowned artist Charles Aubrey along with his exotic mistress & their daughters is like a breath of fresh air. As Charless muse Mitzy develops a deep & abiding bond with the Aubrey household over the course of the following three summers. Gradually Mitzy begins to perceive a future she had never thought possible & a powerful love is kindled in her. A love that will grow as she does: from innocence to obsession; from childish infatuation to something far more complex. It will be almost seventy-five years before the consequences of this potent desire are fully played out as a young man in an art gallery looks at a hastily-drawn portrait & wonders at the intensity of it. The questions he asks will lead him back to Blacknowle & draw him to the truth about those fevered summers in the 1930s. Moving from the wilds of the Dorset coast to the intoxicating heat of a Moroccan summer A Half Forgotten Song explores the quixotic nature of memory
- & the perils of obsessive love.