A bittersweet comedy about a young girl growing up in the English Midlands during the 1970s. Meena is 12 years old and lives in the village of Tollington, "the jewel of the Black Country" – in 1972. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. Her idyllic adolescence, surrounded by eccentric relatives and friends, is interrupted by the arrival in Tollington of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family. At 14 – blonde, aloof, beautiful, outrageous and sassy- Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn her salad days sour.