After sitting all week at a sewing machine at Mackintosh, Freda is ready for a girls' night out. However, she has to tell her friends to go on without her. She has been babysitting her two small grandchildren and, not for the first time, her daughter Lindsey never arrives to collect them.
Now Freda's life is about to change - either she looks after the kids or Social Services will. At first, it's a nightmare. How can she cope with the kids and a full-time job with not enough money and not enough time? She tracks down their father, Tony (Jonathan Wrather), who is less interested in his children than in getting back to his game of pool. Freda doesn't know where to turn.
Luckily, a chance meeting with Mack offers her an opportunity to explain the situation and he gives her the space to sort herself out. Gradually, Freda stops seeing the children as an imposition in her life. With extra income from a new venture in curtain-making, part-time hours at work and friend Julie's open-hearted wil