Lucinda is nine months old and standing in her cot, gnawing at the cot side, while her parents argue.  There is no money in the house.  Neither of her parents work.  Her father has been keeping the family by stealing, and is planning a 'big" job next.  Her mother is five months pregnant and still a young girl.  She has been left alone a lot while her husband has been out stealing and carousing with his mates.  She has been going to parties alone, and drinking and flirting heavily.  Lucinda watches the argument through the open bedroom door, then climbs over the side of the cot and toddles to the dressing table, where she starts picking things up and throwing them on the floor.  Gwynne and Jake stop arguing and rush into the bedroom.  Jake loses his temper, castigating the baby and accusing Gwynne of "trapping him" in a life he didn't want, etc.  He leaves the house, slamming the front door.  Gwynne, who has been picking things up, reaches for Lucinda, bursting into tears.  She rocks back and forth on her knees, crying, and cuddling the baby.  Lucinda's face is calm over her mother's shoulder.  Her baby's hand pats her mother's back, comfortingly.

Lucinda is 16 months old.  Gwynne turns up on her mother's doorstep with her new baby, Cicely, and Lucinda.  Jake has been caught and sent to jail.

Lucinda is in the back garden, exploring the flower beds.  She looks at sweet peas climbing a trellis.  She likes the flowers and climbs onto the soil to get a closer look at them.  A bee lands on a flower and flies away, as she watches.  She looks toward the back door of the house.  A dream vision in her mind focuses on Gwynne and her mother, Frances, sitting at the kitchen table.  Gwynne arranges that she will work to support the family if Frances will look after them all.  Frances agrees.  Lucinda turns back to the sweet peas, taking a flower in her hand and smelling it.

Gwynne is getting ready to go out, "dolled up to the nines," as Lucinda watches.  Frances, holding Cicely, is berating Gwynne for going out every night after work.  Gwynne retaliates that she "must find a new father" for the girls.  Frances accuses Gwynne of liking sex and the high life too much, and of not being a proper mother to her children.  Gwynne answers that, if her mother thinks she can do better then she's willing to let her try, and promptly leaves the house, slamming the door.

Lucinda sits on the gutter of the footpath outside her Nanna's front gate, scratching in the dry silt with a stick.  She looks up and down the empty street.  In a dream vision, she remembers the night her mother left home.  She gets up and returns to the front yard, shutting the gate behind her.

Frances sits on the porch in the sunshine, cuddling Cicely.  Lucinda stands beneath the front bedroom window, wiping cobwebs from beneath the weatherboards with her finger.  A taxi pulls up at the kerb in front of the house and Gwynne alights, smiling at her children.  Frances looks stubbornly away.  Lucinda runs delightedly to her mother, who stands with open arms at the front gate.  As she reaches her mother, we see that just as Gwynne is about to lift her, Lucinda actually flies up off the ground into her mother's arms.  Gwynne doesn't notice this, in her elation.  She carries Lucinda up to the porch.  Frances stands and carries Cicely inside, stonily.  Gwynne follows with a resigned air.

Gwynne enters the front hall of the house, followed by her new boyfriend, Hamish.  She calls out for Lucinda.  She tells Hamish that he has to meet her daughter.  She always brings her boyfriends to meet her daughter because Lucinda never fails to pick the good from the bad.  The child has a sixth sense about these things.  Lucinda runs into the hallway and stops upon seeing her mother and Hamish.  Her mother waits expectantly as Lucinda looks at Hamish.  Hamish goes down on his knees, smiling, and saying hello to Lucinda.  Lucinda smiles and rushes into his arms for a hug.

Jake is standing at the wire screen of the back door on the porch, pleading with Frances to let him see his kids.  Lucinda watches from the back of the room as Frances tells him he gave up that right when he went to jail, that the divorce was final and he'd signed adoption papers for Hamish to become their new father, so now he'd better leave them alone.  Lucinda leaves the kitchen and crosses the hall to her bedroom, where Cicely is playing with her doll.  She sits on the bed beside Cicely, puts her arm around her and kisses her on the cheek.  Cicely has tears in her eyes as she looks at Lucinda.  She asks Lucinda if Mister Man is their daddy.  Lucinda says, not any more, because Nanna has sent him away, and that Hamish is their new daddy now.

Hamish and Gwynne stand in bridal wear on the steps of a church while wedding guests throw confetti on them.  They are happy and laughing.  Lucinda and Cicely stand next to them, as flower girls.  Cicely is shielding her eyes from the sun with one arm and holding Lucinda's hand with the other.  Lucinda hears the bells ringing, and the noise of the wedding party, as a cacophony.  As she watches the crowd, a greyness descends on the scene, and a sudden silence.  The guests appear frozen in their stance.  Lucinda walks down from the steps and through the crowd to the wrought iron bars of the church fence.  She grasps a bar in each hand and looks through them across the street.  A car is parked nearly opposite, with a man resting his head on his arms against the dashboard, as if in grief.  As she watches, a slow motion pulses through the scene, and he raises his face to the window.  It is Jake and he has been crying.  Suddenly, Lucinda is back on the church steps next to her mother, holding Cicely's hand, with the sun shining and the same cacophony as before.

Lucinda is hugging Frances tightly as she says farewell while Gwynne and Hamish urge her to hurry up.  Cicely waits in a packed car, parked at the front kerb, which can be seen from the open front door.  Lucinda hugs Frances more tightly, feeling her ample body against her face.  In a dream vision, Gwynne and Hamish grab Lucinda and pull her away from Frances.  They are speaking, but as if from a long distance.  As they pull her away, Frances' dress rips from her, and Lucinda screams out in anguish, also as if from a distance.  The scene is in slow motion, with a pulsing, thudding sound through it.  Lucinda opens her eyes while still hugging Frances.  Everything is normal.  Frances gently pushes her toward her waiting parents, claiming that they have a long way to go yet.  Gwynne helps Lucinda into the car beside Cicely and tucks a blanket around them both, and props them with a pillow each.  Gwynne kisses Hamish and returns to kiss Frances, then gets into the car and waves through the window as they drive off.  Lucinda stares through the window, solemnly, without waving.  As they drive away, she watches the house recede into the distance through the rear window.  She rests her chin on the back of the seat and looks at the sun beating onto the rear ledge.  A tear rolls down her cheek and onto the seat vinyl.  Cicely's hand creeps into hers.

Lucinda and Cicely lie in bed, as if asleep, while Hamish bends over them in semi-darkness, tucking them in and kissing their cheeks.  From the other side of the room, Gwynne questions if they are asleep and, when he answers yes, she says, good, let's go then, and they leave together.  As the flat front door closes behind them, the girls wake up and scamper over to open the louvre blinds and watch their parents walk gaily off down the street to the pub.  They close the blinds again and turn on the light, asking each other mischievously what they should do now.  A loud knock is heard on the main front door to the flats.  The children freeze.  Quietly, they go to the window.  Lucinda pulls a piece of the louvre apart so that she can see the porch, which is right beside the bedroom window.  A man stands at the door, waiting, with his back facing her.  As she watches, he slowly turns to the window and looks straight at her.  His face is a horrible, leering mask.  He grins, showing pointed teeth.  She looks at his hands, which are hanging by his side, and are gnarled, with long fingernails, and she drops the louvre with fright.  Cicely asks what is wrong and who is there.  Lucinda says no one is there, and it's all right, but she's changed her mind and thinks that they'd better go to sleep, after all.  Cicely agrees, quietly, and she gets into her bed which is beside the window, while Lucinda turns out the light.  Lucinda then gets into Cicely's bed with her, and cuddles Cicely protectively.  Cicely falls asleep while Lucinda watches the ceiling in darkness and silence.  After a while, Lucinda gets up to open a louvre and look out the window again.  No one is there.  She drops the louvre, tucks Cicely in, and returns to her own bed to sleep.

Gwynne is watching Lucinda at the start of a school hurdle race.  The starting gun goes off and Lucinda runs down the track.  Lucinda sees the track ahead of her.  She feels the wind and the exhilaration of speed as she leaves the other runners behind her.  She senses, rather than feels, herself going over the hurdles, not really as a physical thing, but as more a sensation of going up and down.  She is literally "flying" over the hurdles.  Gwynne barracks enthusiastically from the sides.  Another mother next to her exclaims that the child is "flying" over them.  Gwynne grins and says, I know, that's my daughter.  Lucinda finishes the race first, with a long gap behind.

Lucinda paints Cicely's portrait while Gwynne is on the phone to Frances.  They are in the lounge room of a rented house.  Gwynne tells Frances that she has told Hamish she won't move any more while the girls are still at school, and that she has tired of moving around from place to place.  Frances replies, on the phone, that Gwynne knew what sort of job Hamish had when she married him - to which Gwynne replies that, even so, the girls must get some consideration and, even if he has to go, she will stay until they can move from this house into a home of their own.  Gwynne's voice recedes distantly as Lucinda peacefully looks across at her.   She watches clouds of colour puff and circulate around Gwynne's form: Colours of green and yellow, and touches of rose.  She looks back to Cicely, who is sitting watching television in a cloud of deep blue, with touches of green and rose.  Lucinda's dog, Kelly, trots into the room and up to sit beside her.  Lucinda notes its colour clouds of deep rose, with touches of murky brown.  Lucinda and Kelly look deeply into each other's eyes.  Lucinda smiles and turns back to her painting, while Kelly lies herself down on Lucinda's feet.

Lucinda sits on the concrete path near the clothes line in the back yard, in a yoga position.  She looks up at the sky, with its deep blueness and scudding clouds.  She watches the wind bend through the tree tops.  Kelly trots up and lies down beside and against her.  Lucinda shuts her eyes, as if to meditate.  In a dream vision, we see Lucinda entering the hallway at night, just as Hamish storms out of his bedroom, on his way to the kitchen, angrily wrapping a dressing gown around his naked body.  Lucinda sees her mother, sprawled naked on her bed, through their open bedroom door.  Gwynne yells after Hamish barbed taunts about his childishness and lack of patience.  Hamish yells from the other side of the house that Gwynne is frigid.  Gwynne leans out from the bed and slams the door shut, angrily.  Lucinda waits in the dark hallway a moment before returning to her room and shutting the door behind her.  Cicely lies in her bed, eyes staring, and her hands over her ears.  Lucinda gets into her bed beside the window.  Kelly is heard jumping against the wall outside the window.  Lucinda opens the window, leans out, and drags Kelly through and onto her bed.  She goes to sleep.  The dream vision shifts to see Lucinda opening the lounge room door.  The light from the hallway falls upon her mother and a strange man copulating on the floor in the darkened room.  Lucinda closes the door, abruptly.  The vision shifts again to show Lucinda sitting on the floor beside her mother's arm chair while Gwynne downs a bottle of beer and speaks dolefully of her problems with Hamish being absent for long periods of time, and of her loneliness and lack of money, and how when he was home all they ever seemed to do was fight.  Lucinda glows golden as Gwynne talks, and waving aural arms reach out from her and begin to stroke and soothe Gwynne all over.  Lucinda is leaning the side of her head and arms on the chair as this happens, not looking at Gwynne.  Gwynne's conversation becomes more and more stilted until she finally falls asleep.  Lucinda, suddenly drained, falls asleep, too.  The visions stop, and Lucinda opens her eyes to the present, feeling the wind in her face.  She reaches a hand out over the grass growing at the side of the path and spreads her fingers.  They sparkle slightly.  She removes her hand and watches as the grass untwists and grows quickly, vigorously, and greenly at the spot beneath where she'd held out her hand.  She sighs and turns her face forward again, shutting her eyes and taking a meditation position once more.  Lucinda feels the sensation of flying.  We see from her eyes as she zips into the sky and through the clouds, dipping and spiralling above the treetops.  She wakes suddenly as Gwynne touches her shoulder, asking why she doesn't sit on the grass?  Gwynne moves to the clothesline with a basket of wet washing and begins to hang it up.  Lucinda stares at her, dazedly.  Kelly lies her head in Lucinda's lap.

Lucinda, Cicely, and Cherry, James and Thomas, their school friends, are wagging from school at Lucinda and Cicely's house one afternoon.  Gwynne is at work and Hamish is away on a business trip.  They drink coffee, smoke, and eat toast, which Cicely is making.  They talk about relatively deep things in life - for instance, Thomas announces that he has homosexual tendencies.  Cherry says she is bored, so James suggests that they go play table-tennis at his house, since school is now "out."  They all walk to James' house and set up the table.  While they are playing, James' older brother, Taryn, arrives home from work.