Dot and Mavis, both about to turn eighteen, have plans to escape their sleepy Welsh village and go to university somewhere exciting. But they’re both holding on to secrets that might make it impossible.
Dot lives with her mother and grandmother in a rambling house in which they all skirt around the fact that Dot’s father left to buy some balloons for her second birthday party and never returned. She doesn’t remember anything about him, not even his name, and she doesn’t dare ask her fragile mother. But maybe she can find out who he is by herself, maybe he’s been closer to her than she ever realised.
Mavis meanwhile can’t tell Dot what happened after the sixth form disco with Clive Buzzard, the boy they’ve loved all through school, but who is surgically attached at the lips to Debbie Paulson. Except her period is late and Clive won’t talk to her and, perhaps if she ignores it, it will all go away.
And of course there are the stories that both Dot and Mavis’ mothers could tell, if only they spoke to their daughters or each other. There are the observations that, Clarice, Dot’s grandmother has made over the years, and there are their fathers, who might have made terrible mistakes, but also might not be the worst people in the world.
Told in multiple voices, there are no heroes or villains in this tale, just flawed, struggling humans who have to face the past to walk in to their future.