Life is anxious for the Taylor family, as it is for everyone in Portsmouth during the early days of 1941. The worst happens on January 10th, when the Luftwaffe unleashes its full fury on the city in the first of three major blitzes. The Taylors are bombed out, Judy finds her local government job relocated from the gutted Guildhall to a hotel in Southsea, and home is now a small terraced house in April Grove, with one less bedroom and no bathroom or inside lavatory. To add to their troubles, Judy's sailor fiance is killed. Judy is befriended by the Lady Mayoress who invites her to join her team of WVS workers. Her young, recently widowed aunt Polly, determined to turn her own grief to good account, decides to become a volunteer and together they work on the various projects of the WVS - running canteens, accompanying evacuee children to their destinations, helping the families of servicemen, feeding and clothing the homeless, organising scrap collections and so on - often in the face of danger from air raids, flying bombs and V2 rockets. Gradually, Judy and Polly find their own grief healing as they take part not only in their war work but in the life of April Grove, and although both are at first convinced they will never know love again, they each find it in the least likely manner.