Author(s): Lucy Caldwell

General Fiction

It is Belfast in the 1980s and Daisy and Saoirse are living through the hottest summer ever. The yard is too hot, their mother keeps flying off the handle and their father doesn't come home until late. Police sirens whine through the streets at night and Daisy asks why they can't have a mural painted on their house like the other houses down the road. As the two girls dream of ice creams from Antonini's, it's clear that their parents are struggling with each other and the political violence outside that is forcing them ever closer together and yet is also smashing them apart. Then, one day, a tragedy occurs and life changes for ever. Ten years later, Saoirse is in Southern Ireland, far from the sadness of her childhood. But there is still an aching absence in her life and soon she will discover that her extended family is holding the secret of what really happened when she left her childhood home.