A seedy flat, presided over by Vera Lyndon, a slatternly Bohemian with a heart of gold, is home to a motley crew of young people, including her three grown-up children, trying somehow to make a go of life in London. The chaos of their lives as they love, hate and threaten suicide, write novels, play the ukulele and party, is threatened by the arrival of Peter, an ‘almost too good looking’ young artist with a purpose of his own.