She made a promise but can she keep it? When Lucy Patterson promises her dying mother that she'll leave the comfortable home they've shared with her mother's employer Stanley Jones to go & live with her Aunt Flo on the other side of the Mersey she has no idea of the terrible consequences. Life with the Flanagans in the slums of Liverpool & Lucy's new job in a factory are totally different from the world she has known. Mocked by her cousins & the women she works alongside & terrified by the brutality of her uncle & the unwelcome attentions of her cousin Frank Lucy is desperately unhappy. & then one day the worst happens & Lucy finds herself homeless friendless & destitute. It seems there's only one person in the world willing to help her. But can she break her promise to her mother? Or should she accept that there's only one place a girl in her situation can go.. .?