Two doctors attempt to make a grieving mother understand that her son, who has suffered a motorcycle accident, has died, even though he seems to be breathing. But her son is dead. It is not easy to explain a cerebral death, and the doctors' clumsiness only manages to give the mother false hopes. At the end of this disconcerting scene, we discover that the situation is not real, but is in fact a dramatization of a typical case, which the doctors face every day. It is part of a seminary organized by the National Plan for the Donation of Organs. Its purpose is to teach doctors the most humane and clear way to communicate the tragic news of a sudden death to the victim's relatives, followed by the request for the donation of the victim's organs. These seminars are directed by Betty, (Carmen Elias), a respected psychologist.

During the lunch break, Betty receives the unexpected visit of her friend Leo Macias. Betty is surprised and a little upset by her friend's interruption. When Leo explains that she has come because she couldn't remove her boots and needs Betty's help, Betty's surprise turns to stupor. Leo's voice begins to break, as she is close to tears. "I'm not crazy, Betty, just alone."

Betty overcomes her initial hesitation and understands this last remark. Before Leo breaks down, she helps her take off her boots and change them for looser ones. Leo tells her that Paco, her husband, gave her those boots. The first night she wore them, Paco also had to help her take them off.

Paco's absence is the reason why Leo begins to crumble simply because a pair of boots is too tight. Her husband is in Brussels. During the last few months before he left, the couple had argued constantly. Paco is a soldier, a professional strategist, who is participating in the Spanish contingent of the NATO Peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, a mission he requested voluntarily.

The first scene in the film, the fiction interpreted by the doctors and the mother who refuses to understand that her son is dead, is a metaphor for the moment Leo is going through. Paco's love is dead, but she defends it blindly and hangs onto hope, however absurd. Nobody explains the evidence to her in an appropriate manner, not her husband, nor her friend Betty, a psychologist who is also Paco's secret lover.

The postponement of the solution to the problems of her marriage provokes in Leo a fragility and uncertainty that affects and floods all of the aspects of her life, especially her work. Leo feels so weak that she is unable to lie. Even though it is a secret, privy only to her husband, her intimate friend Betty and her editors, Leo Macias is a writer of romance novels who hides under the pseudonym Amanda Gris, one of the queens of this romance genre. By contract she must deliver three novels a year, but Leo has not been able to fulfill her obligations in months. Rather than "pink" novels, everything she writes comes out black. To fill this void, the Fascination Publishing Company, which publishes the novels of Amanda Gris, edits her first anthology, and threatens the writer with revealing her true identity.

Betty recommends her to meet for an interview with her friend Angel, in charge of the cultural supplement of El Pais, a leading newspaper. Angel is charming, although often drunk, a film buff and a fan of Amanda Gris. He does not suspect that the woman who sits before him is his favorite author. Angel proposes that she write something about the Amanda Gris anthology. Leo refuses, claiming she hates that type of literature and that particular author. She leaves the interview very depressed. But then she writes a demolishing critique of her own work using another pseudonym.

Paco calls her from Brussels to announce his visit. He has obtained a day's leave. At the prospect of seeing her husband again, all of her problems immediately disappear.

But she is mistaken. From that moment on, Leo's real test is about to begin....