May, 1940. Wartime Brighton. On Park Crescent, Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the beaches.

It is a year of change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reaches of town, and Evelyn, desperate to feel useful, begins reading to some of the prisoners. One of them is Otto Gottlieb, a 'degenerate' German-Jewish. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn's and Otto's mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else, which will shatter the structures on which her life, her family and her community rest.