Businessman Jack Humpage and his secretary Janice try to make an unconventional deal with a merchant bank before Humpage's son finds out.

The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, learn that their prospects of marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. After Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass on by law to his son. These circumstances leave Mr. Dashwood's wife and daughters without a home and with barely enough money to live on. As Elinor and Marianne struggle to find romantic fulfillment in a society obsessed with financial and social status, they must learn to mix sense with sensibility in their dealings with both money and men.

Mark Omney is a struggling writer, and has a drink problem; his wife Clare is more successful as a journalist. After a dinner-party they host ends badly, they part company the next morning on separate business. Clare becomes ill after an interview assignment, and crashes her car; meanwhile Mark meets former girlfriend Annabelle in the pub. After Clare is taken to a private clinic nearby by Good Samaritans, Mark finds she seems to have mysteriously disappeared

Forced to stay with his aunt and uncle for the summer holidays, Tom Long is lonely and bored, until one night he hears the clock strike 13. He suddenly finds himself transported to a magical Victorian garden of the 1880s and meets a girl.