Lisa Harding

Being Tommy's mother is too much for Sonya. Too much love, too much fear, too much longing for the cool wine she gulps from the bottle each night. Because Sonya is burning the fish fingers, and driving too fast, and swimming too far from the shore, and Tommy's life is in her hands. Once there was the thrill of a London stage, a glowing acting career, fast cars, handsome men. But now there are blackouts and bare cupboards, and her estranged father showing up uninvited. There is Mrs O'Malley spying from across the road. There is the risk of losing Tommy - forever.

Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school. Both girls are from very different broken homes - and beautiful, wilful Jessica has always ensured their survival.

Now eighteen, the two girls have come to Wilde - an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods.

But then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend.

It turns out that Mark's influence is not limited to Linda alone; and Jessica soon finds out that her whole group of friends are keeping secrets for him - culminating in a terrible tragedy that strikes at the end of their first year.