When Mark Rossiter's family left South Africa in 1986, the country was segregated along racial lines in every conceivable way. Black people were denied basic human rights and classified as second-class citizens.

At the same time however, roughly a million African women worked for white people and often became surrogate members of their families. Some of the women were not trusted with the family valuables yet paradoxically put in charge of caring for babies, and white children came to form intimate emotional attachments to women who were considered inferior by society.

Mark's family were liberal white South Africans, but even they benefitted from apartheid through lives of privilege and convenience. His nanny Susan was significant and anonymous at the same time; now Mark returns to South Africa, determined to find the woman who brought him up for 10 years.

He wants to find out what has happened to her in the new South Africa, and to reconcile his own childhood memories of growing up under apartheid.

Armed with just a 25-year-old photograph and Susan's first name, Mark embarks on a journey that takes him from the comfort of the predominantly white suburbs to the poverty-ridden townships to discover what life was like for black women working as servants in white homes.