For Kathy O’Malley, life has not been easy with her husband, Barry, out of work and with two children to feed. Then when war breaks out in 1939, many of the local men enlist, including Barry, leaving the women to cope as best they can.
The years that follow are full of hardship. After a particularly bad raid, Kathy allows her older children to be evacuated but she misses them and worries about them greatly, and Barry too away fighting. Despite this, she copes with: the black out, rationing and the nightly air raids and, to make the money stretch, she begins to work endless shifts at the local munitions factory. The strain of it all is beginning to take its toil when she meets Doug, a handsome American GI, and though she feels the attraction, she is determined not to meet him unless there were others around.
Then one night she finds herself alone with him and when he says they will be moving out the next morning she realises she might never see him again and kisses him and they end up making love. Later, when Kathy misses one period and then another she is frantic. But then she receives a telegram informing her that her husband is missing, presumed dead, and she thinks God has punished Barry for her transgression and guilt is too much and she faints clean away and later in hospital miscarries the baby. She carries the guilt though and it colours her reaction and she often wonders if the laceration inflicted on her family torn apart by war can ever be totally healed