It is Christmas and Mara has just given birth to a baby boy. She has broken the pact she made with her sister, Nell, at the disintegration of their parents' marriage. Nell does not do festivity, marriage or babies - not since the Christmas the family fell apart. Their mother Andy is conspicuously absent, but 30 years ago she was a woman who was loved and needed by these girls. And then there is Andy's sister, the girls' aunt Jean, a woman who has endured much and who holds the delicate balance of this family in her hands.