The year is 1925, and in Liverpool, Rose Ryder worships her father, a tram-driver. She nurses a secret dream of driving trams too, even though it's not considered a job for women. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Colm O'Neill is happily settled - until his father gets a job working on the Liverptool-Birkenhead tunnel, and takes Colm across the water with him.

When tragedy strikes and her beloved father is killed, Rose and her mother scrape a living by turning their home into a boarding house. And it is their boarding house which Colm and his father come to when they arrive in Liverpool...