Chandlers Green

The O'Neils, who have lost brothers and sons into the bowels of London's East End, keep watch over their one remaining young male, Seamus. Meanwhile, Rosh Allen mourns the loss of her husband. Aided and impeded by her mother, she struggles to raise three fatherless children. With the help of a kind-hearted neighbour, her wounds begin to heal. Tess and Don Compton are on the verge of separation. But what really lies behind her desire to live on the posh side of the street? Behind the three families, two men are at work.

In the backstreets of Liverpool, Eileen Watson lives with her mother Nellie, daughter Mel and her three tearaway sons. Life isn’t great, but they have each other, and family can get you through anything. Or can it? Then Britain declares war on Germany and their lives change forever. The children have to be evacuated, but Mel refuses to go, and so Eileen says goodbye to her mother and sons, moves away from the street they love and faces a future without her precious family.

Clara held on to the precious button, glimmering like a jewel in the dark alleyways of London's notorious Seven Dials. She needed to save her family...but who was going to save her? There was a time when the Carter sisters' father was their hero. Now he's a drunk who's gambled away everything they had and put them all in peril. It's on Clara's shoulders to save the four sisters from destitution. Clutching her precious button box, the only thing of value they have left, Clara dreams of starting a shop that could put a roof over their heads and keep them safe....

In 1946, Alice Quigley returns to her childhood home on Penny Lane, having lost her house in Bootle and three sisters to the bombs that fell over Liverpool. Estranged from her husband Dan, she finds comfort in living closer to her remaining sister, Nellie. But even though the bombs have stopped falling, tremors still rock the family when Alice's reviled mother is kicked out of Nellie's home and seeks vengeance.

Lancashire, 1930: Leah Turner's father has been killed in an accident at the laundry, and since her mother died years ago it falls to her to become sole provider for her little sister. But women's wages are half those of men, and pawning the few belongings she has left will keep their vicious rent collector at bay for only a few weeks, so even if she finds a job, they'll lose their home. Out of the blue, Charlie Willcox, the local pawnbroker, offers her a deal.