George Beattie's flowershop in Shields is home for his tight-knit family, but for his granddaughter, Francis Lidell, it's only a prison. Haunted by her family's past, she dreams of escape....Dreams come true when Jack Scott asks her to join his music hall act. Frances runs away with him, relishing the Bohemian life. But inevitably, married, and carrying Jack's child, her fate is to be brought home again to her roots, and to the net of the whispering past which closes around her.

In turn-of-the-century Tyneside, money doesn't grow on trees. With Ma dead, Da often at sea and sister Fanny getting into trouble with the lads, Jane Ridley's life isn't easy. Beautiful, innocent, uncertain of the future, Jane wants more than marriage and countless children. So she takes a job in George Beattie's flower shop, cared for by his gentle wife Adeline. Torn between affections for the shy Ronnie Wilson, and the more exciting advances of Jack Purvis, Jane is forced to grow up overnight when the conflict ends in tragedy....