Two girls have named the clouds over Hampstead Heath since they were nine. The summer they turn sixteen, a dazzling first love and a quiet family catastrophe pull them apart. A story about idealism, the hard winter that follows it, and learning what it costs to turn back up for someone.

In a near-future Britain ruled by fear, an alien boy fleeing a dead world is locked alone in a detention cell, stripped of his family and his name. Then a girl on the other side of the glass looks at him with something other than suspicion. Some bonds are forged in cages.