When thirty-nine-year-old Beth discovers she's pregnant, it isn't the news she was expecting. Increasingly stifled by the middle-class suburbia of their life on Vesey Hill, she had come to terms with the fact that her small family consisted of eleven year old Alex and New Zealand husband Steve, and had begun to look forward to the possibilities of the future: returning to work and maybe leaving Ireland and the confines of Vesey Hill for a new life. As news of her pregnancy sinks in, Beth tries to tell herself that her feelings will change when the baby arrives but then Ismae is born and Beth begins to realise that her dream is now further away than ever. In the months after Ismae's birth, Beth and Steve's marriage is put to the test as a new reality they had never envisaged forces them to evaluate their lives, their marriage and each other.