Life is not easy for fifteen-year-old Charlie Peat. He is living alone in London, while his guitarist father is on tour abroad and his mother is in a care home suffering from the psychological after-effects of a bomb explosion. He has to cope with all the normal problems of everyday life while keeping up the pretence to his grandparents that he is not in fact living alone, and worrying about his father touring in the notoriously unstable country of Trajanov, where terrorism is rife. And this terrorism is about to threaten Charlie far too close to home ...

In this thrilling book Bernard Ashley skillfully interweaves Charlie's story and that of his father in Trajanov into a complex multi-layered narrative which sensitively explores the effects of urban terrorism on young people today.