The story revolves around forty-eight year old Amanda and sixty-six year old Tess, whom we come to know intimately. They are very different from each other in many ways, but each struggling with who they really are, or would like to be.
We are transported back and forth between the days of their respective youth with the blossoming of their first loves, and present-day life in Dublin’s fair city, where they happen to live – separately and at loggerheads – in the same old Georgian house. Amanda’s career-obsessed husband is found to be unfaithful, her teenage children provide an occasional alternative perspective on their expensive but child family life. Meanwhile Tess has given up on life after her younger sister ran off with the man she loved. Each of them resolves to turn over a new leaf, make peace, and start living again. New romances develop and things seem to work out.
The time-hopping is somewhat irritating and confusing, as we tend to forget their ages in any particular scene.