Emmy Dickens lives with her widowed mother in a neat house in neglected Nightingale Court, but Mrs Dickens has always impressed upon her daughter that their main aim in life must be to escape from the court. Emmy sees that marriage is her best way out and when Peter Wesley, First Officer aboard a cruise ship, asks her to marry him, she is over the moon. The newly-weds move to a pleasant house in a good district. They have a child, Diana, and all seems set fair for the little family. But Peter is killed and Emmy is left almost penniless. She and Diana are forced to move back into a vacant house in Nightingale Court, from whence Emmy gets a job in a busy restaurant. She is a beautiful girl and soon attracts young men, but she becomes ill and is sent to a sanatorium in North Wales, leaving Diana to move in with her friends, the Fishers. They have five children of their own but willingly take on a sixth. Diana misses her mother dreadfully, but is buoyed up by the conviction that now Emmy is far away, two of her keenest suitors will be bound to lose interest. She is not to know that both men continue to see and to vie for Emmy's attention...