Annie Armstrong’s elder sister Joy returns home with her daughter Tessa. This puts Annie and Tessa in the curious position of being aunt and niece, but they are the same age. The girls are finding this awkward and to make matters worse, Annie is finding her niece a sneaky little schemer.
Tracey’s mum marries another Jenna Jones’ dad. Jenna is happy and wants them all to be a family, but Tracey wants her parent all to herself again, and tries to split them up by various means.
Jan and Chris hate each other – and then they find they’re sisters.
Georgie Hudson is orphaned and taken in by her Aunt Meg after a spell in a Children’s Home. But her cousins, all boys, are not friendly because they mistakenly thought she would be a boy and do not welcome a girl. Their hostility gets worse when Georgie’s arrival brings changes to the household that they do not like, such as Georgie unwittingly inspiring Aunt Meg to put them on a washing-up rota. The boys are soon causing trouble for Georgie and want her out. Georgie is trying to find a way to win them over, but isn’t having much success.
Janet Knight overhears Nurse Camp relieving her guilty conscience about accidentally switching two babies at birth and was too terrified to report it because she feared the dragon Sister. She gives a written confession to her mother before leaving on missionary work, who advises her to keep quiet. Janet realises she is one of the switched babies and Sally West is the other one. Fearing the heartbreak that speaking out would cause, Janet tries to discreetly get closer to her real family, but it always goes wrong.
Lisa Murray’s mother becomes a pop star. But the demands of her new career are not leaving her much time for Lisa.
The parents of Heather and Carly Clayton have been missing for a year after a jungle air crash but have now returned. Heather is overjoyed but Carly starts causing trouble. She had enjoyed a luxurious life with the Warringtons, the foster-family the girls stayed with, but it made her spoiled and snobby, and she wants to keep in touch with them. The parents resent this and this leads to arguments. But when Heather tries to tell the Warringtons about Carly’s conduct they refuse to listen.
Tina Marshall hopes that divorced Mr Todd will pop the question to her mother. Then Tina overhears Mr Todd’s daughter Hayley saying something that sounds like she feels inferior to Tina and cannot live in her shadow. Fearing this will be a barrier to the proposal she hopes for, Tina tries to address it by finding something Hayley is good at. But her efforts keep going wrong.
Karen Day’s mother has an evening job and now her father has been forced to change to the night shift, leaving the Day children on their own in the evenings. Dawn, the eldest, is supposed to be in charge, but is unsuited for the job because she is scatterbrained and this causes things to go wrong. Dawn’s younger sister Karen takes the blame because she does not want her parents to worry about Dawn’s incompetence, but this keeps getting her into trouble with them.
Toni Dixon’s parents are divorced. She lives with her mother during the week and her father, stepmother Diane and baby William at weekends. This is causing problems, even at Christmas.
