Eilish Stack, a married generalist microbiologist, is living in Southern Ireland with her husband Larry Stack, e deputy general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, and four children when they receive an evening knock on the door. Two men stand outside, inquiring after Larry, and tell him to call at his earliest convenience. The men are detective inspectors, Stamp and Burke, from the “Garda National Services Bureau (GNSB)”, a part of the new and increasingly tyrannical government. The National Alliance bought the GNSB in to replace the Special Detective Unity after they came to power – a sort of secret police in the state.
Larry explains that they are probably building a case against another teacher, and need intel, and so he agrees to call them up tomorrow and show them that he has nothing to hide.
Larry drives to the Kevin Street Garda Station. Burke explains that an allegation of utmost importance has been received and directly concerns Larry. The Detectives further explain that an Emergency Powers Act has recently come into effect in response to the ongoing crisis facing the state. This act gives supplemental provision and power to the GNSB to maintain public order. Hence, they explain that any agent working against the state is an enemy and that Larry must examine his conscience to ensure that this is not the case. Larry rebuts this with the fact that as a senior trade unionist, his job is to engage in peaceful industrial action to defend the rights of teachers, and that this has nothing to do with the “so-called crisis” faced by the state. He leaves.
At a quarter past one in the morning, Larry receives a phone call from Carole Sexton, the wife of a teacher, Jim, who has been part of the strikes. He hasn’t returned home and was seen taken by the GNSB and put in the back of the car. Like Larry, Jim was taken in last week regarding an allegation, which he just laughed at.
Worried, Eilish rings her father, Simon, who says they should think about moving to Canada. Eilish dismisses his idea – what about her and Larry’s career, and the kid’s school lives? Larry wakes up night after night, explaining that the march must go ahead. Jim has still not returned. Nevertheless, Eilish and Larry decide that he must go to march – there is no way that the NAP can get away with thinking they are above the law.
While Eilish is at work she catches news of the march – it has turned graphic – there is tear gas and police with horses and batons. She calls Larry, but no reply.
It starts to become clear that Larry is not immediately coming home, and Eilish has to break the news to her oldest two children Molly and Mark that their father has probably been rounded up by the government and will be subjected to intimidation. They decide to keep it a secret from the two younger boys, Bailey, and Ben.
Eilish is visited by Michael Given, a man with intel on the government’s movements. He tells Eilish that there is talk of moving the detained to intermittent camps in the Curragh. Given explains that the increasing arrests are a result of the NAP’s desire to turn this country into a security state – they have said that they’ll start drafting for the Defence Forces. He is unable to offer any more help for the risk of his own arrest.
Finally, Eilish has to tell Bailey the truth about the absence of his father, and the fact that nothing may happen before Christmas.
Stepping out of work, on the way to the passport office, Eilish comes across an old friend of Larry’s, Rory O’Connor. He is wearing a party pin on the lapel of his jacket. He asks after Larry, but Eilish is vague and says he is no longer working at Mount Temple school.
At the passport office, the administrator explains that Eilish cannot renew the passport of her eldest Mark, as the Emergency Powers Act requires a background and security check. Due to Larry’s detention, their family has been deemed a security risk. It is clear that any chance of going to Canada is off the cards.
Christmas day is spent without Larry, and all of Eilish’s attempts to get in contact with Given, the ministry, the head of the GNSB, and human rights agencies have failed.
Eilish visits her father, who explains that he also has been visited by the NAP. At the supermarket, Molly points out Detective Inspector Stamp and his wife. Having fallen behind at work, due to all of the stress and distraction, Eilish resolves to visit the Detective Inspector’s house. Eilish explains to Mrs. Stamp Larry’s situation. In response, the Detective Inspector’s wife calls Eilish and Larry “scum” and verbally assaults her.
At home, the water is becoming a sludgy brown, mirroring one of Eilish’s nightmares, and Mark receives a letter of conscription calling him up for National Service as soon as he turns seventeen in a couple of weeks. Mark comes clean and explains that he was examined at school by an army official and a doctor. Mark sets the letter alight.
Colm Perry, a colleague at work, tells Eilish that four boys have been arrested from St Joseph’s in Fairview for denouncing the gardaí, security forces and the state with red spray paint. Large protest groups of parents and students begin to gather outside of Store Street Garda Station protesting their release. Perry tells Eilish that she must get her children out of Ireland as soon as possible. Larry has been gone for fourteen weeks.
At her cousin Saroise’s wedding, Eilish notices that no one asks her about Larry, not daring to address the elephant in the room. Meanwhile, back at home, Mark is late for supper. Eilish checks his phone and finds a search history full of brutality, murder, beheadings and executions. It is clear that her children are not naïve to the death that is beginning to surround them.
News breaks out that two of the detained boys are dead. Fed up with being passive, Eilish rallies the kids to wear white and they begin the 50,000-strong march towards College Green. At the march, Eilish sports marksmen on the rooftops and men pointing long-range cameras. Mark arrives with a friend dressed in a white t-shirt with a white bandana – Eilish tells him to be back by eight. Later the march turns brutal; search warrants and arrests are made, cars are attacked with bats and bricks, set alight and men in balaclavas drag people from their cars.
A letter arrives from the Department of Justice to say that Mark’s application for a renewed passport has been declined without explanation. His birthday is only in two weeks. Meanwhile, Mark has still not returned from the march.
Carole Sexton, who has been staying the night, offers to mind the children while Eilish goes to the National Indoor Arena, the detention centre, to look for Mark. En route, Eilish calls her father, who is becoming more demented by the day. After a futile attempt to find Mark at the centre, Eilish returns home to see him stretched out in the living room. Relieved, she tells him never to involve himself again with such antics. In reality, however, she knows that she’s lost Mark to rebel efforts.
The supermarkets begin to run out of supplies, they are guarded by soldiers, and checkpoints with armed gardaí spring up on the roads. Looking out the window at home, Eilish watches Mark speed away with some random youngster in an old Toyota.
Mark turns up late for his birthday supper, and Eilish announces that she’s decided to send Mark to a boarding school across the border. Mark rebuts that he is not owned by Eilish, but by the state, and he refuses to go. Simon tries to explain the naïveté of Mark’s decision to him, but this falls on deaf ears. Carole Sexton offers to keep Mark safe in her outhouse for two weeks until her brother can arrive to take him across the border in his van.
The gardaí knock on the Stack’s door enquiring after Mark. They explain that there was a summons sent out and that Mark did not turn up to answer, and that if he is discovered to be a resident in the state there is a warrant for his arrest, and he’d have to be handed over to military police. Eilish has to make a sworn statement that he is doing his schooling across the border in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, Mark is becoming increasingly resistant to being kept captive. Eilish visits her demented father for reassurance. In a moment of reason, he tells Eilish that they’ve printed Mark’s name and their address in the Newspaper and that Mark has been publicly shamed and is a target for arrest. Carole rings to tell Eilish that Mark did not come back home last night. Mark finally calls Eilish to say that he’s sorry, but he cannot run away, and that he’s in a safe space and everything is fine. Eilish watches from the window as three men vandalise and urinate on their Touran. They can no longer afford to keep the car anyway, and so she decides to sell it.
A meeting with a solicitor Anne Devlin reveals that nobody can tell her where Larry is. Meanwhile, Carole hysterically tells Eilish that she believes Jim to be abducted and murdered by the State, but also that Mark will most likely be part of the rebels. Molly begins to plead that they leave, but Eilish has to explain that they won’t renew Mark’s passport.
Increasing governmental decrees are made, banning schools, third-level institutions, and ordering citizens to stay at home except to buy food or medicine or to provide care to the elderly or sick. War begins to shape itself around them, the areas within the south city are under siege.
A lady arrives sent by Áine – Eilish sister who lives in Canada – she says she needs some documents, but she can get them over the border into the non-governmental territory. Eilish refuses. What if Mark returns?
Explosions and offensives start to encroach on the house. Time passes – Eilish spends ages trying to get through to Áine, until she finally hears that Simon has made it through the border. Prices are going up and up…
One day Bailey gets a piece of shrapnel in his head, which he needs to have removed in a hospital across the front line. A clown takes them in his car to the Temple Street Hospital. At the checkpoint, the Garda don’t let them through, he says that he can take them to St. James Hospital over the way if they say that Bailey is sixteen.
At the hospital, the nurse tells Eilish that visiting hours are over and that they need Bailey’s public service number and security ID, but that she can leave Bailey and bring these details tomorrow. Eilish manages to return home to Molly and Ben.
The next day, she gets to the hospital on foot through the warfare. The nurse reveals that Bailey has been transferred to another hospital – St Bricin’s, a military hospital. In Smithfield that belongs to the Defence Forces.
When Eilish arrives, it is in vain. The clerk tells her categorically that Bailey isn’t there and she is dragged away by a policeman. In the evening she goes back on foot to the hospital. A cleaner tells Eilish that she ought to go to the morgue. Eilish pleas with a clerk, blindly following after a military policeman. He takes her to the morgue. Here, she identifies the dead body of Bailey, wet with blood, missing broken teeth, and nails in his hands. A statement of death says it was heart failure.
As a last resort, Eilish, Molly and Ben begin their secret trip across the border. Eilish barters with the official at the border to let them in, even though all the money that she has is not enough. She manages to save Molly from being subjected to rape as a means of getting them through. Lopping off both her hair and Molly’s, and throwing away Molly’s makeup, the dehumanised trio are driven to a cramped room, where they wait for days with a bunch of around fifty people, festering and living off rations.
At last, the Gaffer arrives and says they’ll be leaving tonight and are allowed only one bag per person. They are taken in a truck to a beach where life vests and a boat await. Molly refuses to go, but Eilish looks forward and sullenly directs them all to the sea, where the only hope of life remains.