Newly installed as resident caretaker of four half-derelict West End flats, Martha Brazil can scarcely believe her luck. After years of stuffy bedsits and suburban flatshares, the future seems electric with the promise of renovation and repair. Surely anything might happen to a girl who embraces it with gusto... But even in her new home painful memories will intrude: of a high-handed father, a mother willing to embrace only the chronically dispossessed, and a beloved brother whose antics have estranged him from the family.