Emily Murphy wonders if she s lost her plug. She doesn t seem to be connected to life s electricity anymore as she wanders about her enormous, empty home. Her once-idealistic, handsome husband Alex has metamorphosed into a hard, ruthless, work-obsessed capitalist, the children are long since gone and so are her looks. Then into her life comes Mae McNulty, the cleaner. With four children by four absent men, not to mention a lady-killing, sharp-dressing father, an irascible grandfather and an illegally enlarged council house, Mae could not be more different to her employer. Despite their differences, the two women soon form a strong friendship and a complex, hilarious train of events begins, involving mistaken identity, two pounds of Semtex, a transvestite prostitute, the police, four fathers and a health and beauty salon in Bootle called Cleopatra s.