When three estranged sisters, Gloria, Ana and Lidia, meet up again on the death of their mother, Adela, they find themselves obeying her somewhat eccentric last wishes. Though their mother has spent the last 30 years without uttering a single word, she has left very clear written instructions of what she wants done after her death. Her ashes are to be divided in three, and delivered to three different people: their mother's best friend, Rafaela; Gloria's childhood companion, Santos, and finally the three girls' fugitive father, Joao. To do so, the three women must leave the urban cocoon of Madrid and head for their childhood home in the remote hinterland of Galicia. Gloria, single and 47, whose only interest is dancing boleros, Ana, a sophisticated, high-class prostitute, and Lidia, pregnant for the first time at 34 by a married man, make difficult travelling companions, accompanied as they are by three urns containing Adela's remains. As they move nearer their own past, the journey becomes the key which opens family secrets, bringing emotional discovery and reconciliation.