Rosie is a young pre-university student, who has fled her home in America where she has just delivered her own baby to her infertile sister. Now, in Paris, she seeks work as an au pair, and finds a post with a curious family aboard a houseboat. Nicole, the mother, is beautiful, brittle and elusive. Her husband, Marc, adoring but downtrodden. The three children all different in their own ways: 13 yr old Guillaume is the favourite, and wants to be a priest; Odile is struggling with conflicting sexual feelings; Lola needs love and affection. A complex, but absorbing family who initially tease Rosie for her inadequacies, but then come to accept and need her. On a trip to Spain, it is Rosie who takes charge, at last she is the one who is fluent in the language, the culture, the pace of the country. And with that comes new developments for Marc seems to want her more and more and Nicole proves to be a stifled and muddled woman, with a childhood torn apart by a love affair between her mother and a German officer.