Emily Murphy has mislaid her plug. She is no longer connected to life's electricity as she wanders around her lovely, possibly haunted, empty home. Her once idealistic, handsome husband Alex has turned into a hard, ruthless work-obsessed capitalist, her children have left and she has lost her looks.Then into her life comes Mae McNulty, the cleaner. With four children by four absent men, not to mention a lady-killing, sharply dressed father, a bad tempered granddad, and an illegally enlarged council house, Mae couldn&t be more different from her employer.Despite their differences, the two women quickly form a strong friendship and a complex, hilarious chain of events ensue, involving mistaken identity, two pounds of Semtex, a chaotic wedding and a beauty salon in Bootle called Cleopatra's . . .