Edie marries young to escape her unhappy family home. Widowed at nineteen and, after losing her child from the marriage, she faces the war grieving and lonely. Then one night during the Blitz, an infant mysteriously abandoned during the bombing is handed into her care. Ruby, meanwhile, doesn't want to be left behind in the wedding stakes and settles for marriage with Frank. Finally there's Janet, kind-hearted and susceptible to male charm, who is hurt desperately by an affair with a married man.