Twins Tanwen and Donna Evans are as different as chalk and cheese. Tanwen is pretty, pert, a bubbly extrovert but very selfish and egotistical and as slim and sharp as a needle. Donna is plain, shy, but warm-heated, compliant, placid and as sturdy and as useful as a pin. In 1930 when the girls are 14 their mother Gwyneth insists both girls become apprentices at The Cardiff Drapers. Tanwen is a tremendous flirt and is in great demand when she becomes the store model. Gwyneth insists Donna goes along with her sister when she has a date and Donna ends up playing gooseberry or in the company of a boy she doesn't like - until she meets tall handsome Dylan Edwards and falls in love. Tanwen steels Edwards from Donna. When Tanwen becomes pregnant they are both sent away and when they return with the baby, Barri, Gwyneth insists that they tell everyone it is Donna's so that Tanwen's career as a model isn't in jeopardy. Tanwen wants Barri to be sent to an orphanage but believing the baby to be Dylan's Donna can't bear for that to happen. She stays at home to look after Barri, struggling to make ends meet.Gwyneth falls ill and the young doctor, Gareth Thomson who attends her falls in love with Donna. When Gwyneth dies he asks her to marry him, believing Barri to be her child. They marry but on their wedding night Gareth discovers Donna is still a virgin and demands the truth. When they face Tanwen and Dylan with the truth Tanwen admits the baby isn't Dylan's, she only said that to stop Donna ever getting Dylan back. She and Dylan are about to emigrate to America where they have a wonderful future planned. Donna won't let Barri go into an orphanage. She loves him as if he were her own. She tells Gareth she will keep him. Gareth is delighted and they decide to adopt the child and bring him up as their own.