Just north of London live Wendy, Andy and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy is a clerk in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodelling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd person out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.