Josie always liked to have a laugh. Why did everyone take life so seriously? "Let the party begin" was her motto. After the childhood she'd had she would grab happiness wherever she could find it. She embarks on an affair with her best friend's husband, with dire consequences. The party was about to end. Mags always felt second best, accepting whatever life threw at her. Bullied by her father into a marriage that left her battered and worn, she plucks up the courage to leave her abusive husband. When she finds herself a new life he continues to harass her. Only his death can set her free. Liz always wanted more from life. She was beautiful and smart. At eighteen she ran away from home to escape a tyrannical father, and marry her boyfriend, Sam. They struggled with married life, until his gambling became too much for her. A deserted wife with four children by the time she's twenty nine, she's forced to go back to her father's house. After years of affairs always settling for less, she finds herself thinking more and more of Sam. On the day she's burying her father she sees him across the graveyard. Mary watched them all as she grew up: her mother and her aunts. They always seemed to go from one disastrous situation to another. She was afraid she would grow up like them. She never got over her father leaving her as a child. All she ever wanted was a normal family life. But no one was going to rescue her from her pill-popping mother, or her abusing grandfather. She dreamed of a day when her father would come back for her.