Lizzie is concerned about her newly divorced mother - thirty-one years old, with three young children and a Labrador in a hostile village in the English countryside. It isn't that having a husband is good, but in 1970s rural Leicestershire, not having one is bad. The women in the village think Lizzie's mother is after their husbands while no one will let the children into the Brownies. And so Lizzie and her sister embark on a misguided campaign to find a new 'Man at the Helm'.