Growing up in a small seaside town, Marcie Brooks dreams of owning a Mary Quant mini-skirt, the Beatles, & escape. Instead she's stuck in a dead-end job selling candy floss to tourists & with a crazy family. Her grandmother sees ghosts, her step-mother is unable to control her growing family & Marcie's father is usually in & out of prison or away 'working' for East End gangsters. Despite it all, Marcie adores her father, but Tony's light fingers & hard man reputation mean most people give the Brooks family a wide birth. Sometimes Marcie even wishes she had a respectable dad like her friend Rita; well-groomed, wealthy by local standards & surprisingly attentive to a teenage girl. But when she discovers Tony may have had something to do with her real mother's death, Marcie finds her friend's father is more than just a shoulder to cry on.