At 66 Paula Spencer - mother grandmother widow addict survivor - is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys a man - Joe - with whom she shares what she wants friends who see her for who she is and four grown children now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts Paula has started to push her past aside. That is until Paula's eldest Nicola turns up on her doorstep. Independent affluent a loving wife and mother 'a success' - Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. Over the next few days as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis mother and daughter find themselves untangling anecdotes jokes memory and revelation to confront the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.