The central character of the story is a woman named Maria Popova. She used to work as a teacher in a school but found herself in a difficult situation and responded to a nanny job vacancy. Maria ends up in the affluent family of Irina and Yevgeny Kozhevnikov. The employers have one condition: the nanny must be of retirement age, while our heroine is only 40 years old. Eager to solve her financial problems, Maria decides to deceive the employers and pretends to be an old lady. She is aided in this by her makeup artist friend.