During two late-night sessions, Heleen, recently admitted as a patient to a mental institution, tells the night nurse her life story. She is the eldest in a working-class household that steadily fills up with nine other children. Her life gets a new perspective when she decides to spend the night with the well-situated Mr Groenmans in Hotel Royal. Not long after, he finds a job for her as a salesperson in an exclusive men’s clothing store. Craving success and wanting so badly to flee her restrictive background, she quickly climbs the social ladder.

Marianne Philips describes a life of riches and humiliation, driven by hatred as much as love. What starts as the tale of an ambitious young woman, who suddenly has to be a mother to her youngest sibling, turns into a feverish story of a woman who falls off her self-made pedestal.