Louise Créteur's husband dies on the Titanic trying to emigrate, so she must leave their boy Lucien with her old dad in Honfleur and leave the Normandy countryside for greater Paris. She becomes a maid in the run-down Villa des Roses, a dodgy pension run by crafty retired barrister Hugh Burrell and his frivolous, posh wife Olive, an international home to has-beens and would-bes. Louside becomes the lover of German painter, but fears he's not committed and has an abortion. Fate changes, at the eve of World War I.
On the eve of retirement a middle class, judgmental snob discovers her husband has been having an affair with her best friend and is forced into exile with her bohemian sister who lives on an impoverished inner-city council estate.
When Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider from humble beginnings, marries into the Gucci family, her unbridled ambition begins to unravel their legacy and triggers a reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately...murder.
.png)
.png)