An anxious father battles to stop his world crashing down around him. A bereaved schoolboy waits half a lifetime to honour his mother's memory. An apprentice spy makes a desperate last stand against the forces of fascism. In the contemporary city, on the sunny Costas, and in a dystopian future kingdom, three reluctant protagonists struggle to live up to an ideal of themselves before ultimately succeeding against all odds and expectations. In these three loosely linked and fiercely honest novellas, the author returns to his signature themes of desire, regret, death, and the possibility of love.