Teaching full-time and acquiring all the oddball kids in the new intake are only the first of Beth's challenges when Alan leaves her after 25 years of marriage. She also has to turn her untidy Cambridge house into a B&B to make ends meet and then counteract the effect of regular theatrical guests on her stage-mad teenage children. Alan doesn't even have the decency to stay out of her life. Instead he makes disapproving incursions back in with his saccharine-laden new partner. But Beth's real worry is lodger Owen Pendragon - a character actor with wicked hazel eyes, a quirky sense of humour and a tendency to walk around her home sexily damp in his bathrobe. With attitudes and lifestyles clashing, will Beth and Owen ever find common ground? All they can do is to take things 'stage by stage'.