Barbara Tate was twenty-one when she escaped from her loveless home to the forbidden streets of Soho. London after the Second World War would never be the same again. There the naive Barbara met the beautiful and capricious Mae. When she takes a job as Mae's maid, she imagines she'll be housekeeping. But down a shabby back street Barbara discovers the secret lives of Soho's working girls ... In an astonishing world of fierce friendships, bitter rivalries, dangerous men and desperate measures, Barbara soon learns that taking the punter's money and making tea are just the essentials. She will need to be nursemaid, protector and confidante to impossible, adorable, self-destructive Mae.