Episode list

When Irish serving girl Anna Fitzgerald quits her job and her lover to hit the road, little does she know what fate has in store for her when she encounters a stranger camping in a field. After a difficult first meeting, he reveals himself to be an aspiring artist called Nick Faunt and despite his initial reluctance agrees to let her accompany him up to Manchester. What she doesn't know is that he is a millionaire's son who has rejected his privileged upbringing to try and make it in the art world in the Depression hit 1930's. But he is not the only one who has secrets, as Nick is soon to find out.

Nick and Anna stay overnight at his friend Anton Brune's art studio until Nick finds new lodgings. As Anna learns more about his artist friends and Bohemian lifestyle, she also finds herself used for one of Nick's paintings when he asks her to pose nude for him. But Nick's condition if they are to live together is as just friends. As it is, he now knows about Anna's 5 year old son Brian, who is being cared for by her friend Jacob "Mo" Rosing. But Jacob's sister Rachel, tired of the child living with them, tells Jacob that Anna is only back in Manchester for one reason - she wants the child back. Meanwhile Anna meets Nick's father Sir George Faunt - only she doesn't know who he is.

Jacob is devastated when Anna rejects his marriage proposal and confirms she wants Brian back, and dejected he leaves the house and disappears. Nick bumps into Jacob's sister - and Anton's girlfriend - Rachel at a hotel while sketching ice skaters as the two continue to spar off one another, but Nick is preoccupied about moving into new lodgings in the loft of Mr Carless. Anna learns about Nick's privileged upbringing in the newspaper after it reports on the success of one of his paintings at the art gallery and later they are invited to the Lord Mayor's Town Hall Reception. But the evening does not go to plan, while Anna finally learns who Sir George really is.

Nick and Anna are still at loggerheads after the Town Hall fracas. Nick tries to make it up with Anton by going over to his studio to give him the nude painting of Anna as a gift, only to find Rachel there. Despite his animosity towards her, when he later takes her to a cafe he admits he is attracted by her beauty and soon discovers the feeling is mutual. Anna is disturbed after she and Nick saw Jacob at a Communist rally led by Joe Kipple, but she is also unsettled by her feelings towards Nick. As she prepares her son Brian for Whit Week ceremony, little does she know of the events that are to unfold.

Anna is out of her mind with worry when Brian goes missing, but she is also suspicious about Rachel's increasing visits to Nick and confronts him about it. Jacob has Brian at the Kepple house, having kidnapped him from the Whit Week parade, but Brian is running up a fever. And Jacob is surprised by a visitor, who turns out to be Joe Kepple's daughter Jenny, but she has her own reason for coming to Manchester. Meanwhile Rachel meets Sir George Faunt in a posh restaurant, and it is there that she learns why he is so estranged from his son Nick. But it's not the only shock in store for her as Sir George becomes ever more infatuated by her.

Rachel decides to accept Sir George's marriage proposal, but tells her brother Jacob not to reveal he is her brother after he turns up with Jenny Kepple at Sir George's house. Jacob is then left reeling when he discovers from a drunk Jenny that she is actually married to Nick and the circumstances behind it, and raging he takes her to Nick's flat to confront him while Anna is there, little imagining the tragedy that will follow. And Sir George's efforts to avoid himself implicated in the inquest results in another secret becoming very public and destroying all chances of reconciliation, as well as impacting the lives of others.

Anna is still trying to come to terms with the fact that Rachel is pregnant with Nick's child. Piggy White is stunned to find Rachel now working as a prostitute in a posh hotel, now that her engagement to Sir George is off, and makes her a job offer to work for him at his new pub. Jacob, now deep in depression, helps out the Kepple's with their protest march about unemployment. Nick decides to sketch the march, but on the day things turn ugly and go badly wrong. Meanwhile Anton Broune returns to make Nick an offer, but while there is hope for some, for another there is tragedy just around the corner.