Harriet was abandoned as a child in nineteenth-century London's East End. Ragged and terrified, she was forced to scavenge for her food until Mary Dean found her and took her to a smath house in Bow where she was brought up as a sister to Mary and her younger brother Arthur. But 17 years later, Harriet and Arthur have fallen in love, and Harriet is pregnant. Driven out of Bow by neighbours who spit at them and call them heathens, they seek refuge in two rented rooms in Stepney.