Twelve-year-old Daisy Smith steals a carrot for Jackie Murphy, an Irish barrow-boy, and so begins a love affair which will last for both their lives. Even when Jackie's family leave for Australia, Daisy cannot forget her childhood sweetheart - and she determines to follow her love to the ends of the earth, if need be! In Australia they both make their fortunes - Jackie in the opal mines and Daisy through the outback bar she runs with her husband. On his death she returns to England to be with Petal, the illegitimate daughter born out of her love for Jackie. But restless Petal is determined to forsake her East End life for a modelling career in New York. Though Daisy and Jackie are destined never to marry, their various children, like Eve's apples, will spread out across the world to create new lives thousands of miles away from their East End roots.