Description
I once had a forbidden friend.
He was funny and brave, had scabbed knees and grubby shorts,
a gleeful grin and fathomless eyes. My co-conspirator and hero.
He called himself Emmet
Summer 1966. Claire and her brothers are packed off to Granny Connemara when their mother runs away. Granny’s rural Irish cottage is very different to their Cardiff city home, the peaty air thick with unspoken secrets. With no sign of Uncle Jack picking them up at the end of the holidays, there is school to be survived.
Granny is formidable and the children unsettled by the conversations they’re excluded from. Will Mother ever return? Will they ever get home? Why does their father hate everything to do with Ireland?
The only light on Claire’s horizon is an out-of-bounds friendship… and it will change her life forever.
From the Not the Booker shortlisted author of Not Thomas
