Safe in their love, Tom and Naomi Barnes pursue their dream of family
and prosperity as transplants to a London brimming with immigrants and
opportunities. Tom works long hours for a super hedge fund and Naomi,
while bringing up their boys, is commissioned by fellow prep school mum
and immigrant Solange Wolf, to write her memoir. Solange's story of
survival and triumph, from the slums in Haiti to becoming an executive
with a Fortune 500 company, and inter-racially married to an equally
successful man, has a profound effect on Naomi, herself a mixed-race
transplant from Colombia married to a white British man full of ambition
and potential. Everyone she knows back in Cartagena, including her own
mother would kill for a marriage like hers.
As Tom grows in wealth and power, he assumes control over the direction
of his family's life, including the direction of Naomi's. She feels
herself shrinking into a cardboard cutout of herself, adorned in
beautiful clothes, diamond jewelry, and all the trappings of money. She
watches Tom create a life that has no need for her as a woman, only as a
mother and trophy wife. When Tom tells her, he is voting Brexit to
please his boss, Naomi finally decides to take action.
She heads to Solange's house where she finds a heartbroken Solange who
declares that her husband has suddenly left her for a younger woman
pregnant with his child. Despite the years of hard work, she implores
Naomi to burn the manuscript, insisting her entire life has become a
lie. With this rash request, Naomi starts to doubt not only Solange's
grasp on reality but her own, and although the two women try to heal,
their wounds run deep, and London, without the backing of powerful men,
is now a strange and alienating backdrop against which they must
redefine themselves.
