Dimity Rush craves change. Human Resources Manager for a debt collection agency, she's been marooned for eight years on a Kumeu lifestyle block where anaesthetist husband Stuart planned to grow olives. Now she's taking charge, dragging her family into Ponsonby, to kick-start her life and marriage. Over the fence, long-term renter Arthur Short and his two girls are struggling to cope now mum's gone and shacked up with a woman. When Arthur hears his place is on the market, and that Dimity has already poked her nose in, the battlelines are drawn.