Thirty years of family secrets. Three generations of women. One family heirloom that could change everything. When she ran away from her childhood home in Guyana, Rika swore that she would never return. Cut off from her family, she has fought hard to make a life for herself and daughter, Inky, in London. Now, over thirty years later, Rika's cantankerous, wheelchair-bound mother, Dorothea, arrives in London. But as old wounds re-open, Dorothea and Rika are further apart than ever. Inky soon learns that her grandmother is sitting on a small fortune. As she uncovers the secrets of the past one...

1910, South America. A time of racial tension and poverty. A time where forbidden love must remain a secret. Winnie Cox lives a privileged life of dances and dresses on her father's sugar cane plantation. Life is sweet in the kingdom of sugar and Winnie along with her sister Johanna, have neither worries nor responsibilities, they are birds of paradise, protected from the poverty in the world around them. But everything can change in a heartbeat... When Winnie falls in love with George Quint, the post-office boy, a 'darkie' from the other side, she soon finds herself slipping into a double...