When Clemency and her sister Verity move from London to Caithness during WWII they devise very different ways of coping with the changes. Clemency longs to return south and fly planes with the Air Transport Auxiliary, while Verity is content to stay in Scotland, where there are so many men to fall in love with. Their father, a stickler for morals - although his own are questionable - disapproves of Clemency's wish to fly, but she escapes and joins her cousin, Dory, for training. Left behind, Verity finds love with an Italian POW and the sisters realize, at great personal cost, that love and war each hold their own dangers...