Marie King is fifty-nine, recently divorced, and has lived a rather privileged suburban existence. And though her three adult children have moved out, they are telling her what to wear, making her buy smarter furniture, and urging her to sell the family home and with it her beloved garden. Marie feels trapped.

On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo - the beginning of an unexpected friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys. Her children are mortified by their mother's transformation, but have their own self-absorbed challenges to deal with: workplace politics, love affairs and the real-estate market. Before long, Rhys has introduced Marie to a side of her city that she never encountered before and she begins to realise that the affluent world she has left behind has kept her in its clutches for far too long.