This novel centres around three friends for whom suddenly everything is at stake. Selvon, the athlete, driven by the need to win, counts the days until he can start over at Brunel. Music-obsessed Ardan, whose wickedly sharp rhymes are his only form of self-defence, is unexpectedly offered a glimpse of a future he has hardly dared dream of. Yusuf slips away from home for an afternoon of football, far from the fallout of his father's death. Whether he can escape the ugly radicalism gaining the upper hand at his mosque is another matter. When the mood turns dangerous on the Stones Estate, there can be no certainties for any of them.