Four mother's lives interweave across continents and time... Kasambayi, recently arrived in the UK from the Democratic Republic of Congo, starts her contractions on the number 38 bus at Clapton Pond, and gives the final push at Victoria. She names her daughter Hope - hope for their new life, hope for their future. Once Hope is fully grown, her path crosses with Alice, a foreign correspondent with a particular interest in the latest mineral tormenting the DRC: cobalt. But will their budding friendship threaten the safety that Kasambayi has so carefully built for them in London? Meanwhile Alice Seeley-Harris, a Victorian missionary wife in King Leopold's Congo has a horrible sense that history is repeating itself. Possession is a tale about desire. About owning and being owned. About colonising and being colonised. And ultimately about the power of the spirit to escape oppression.