Jamaica Road

South London, 1981. Daphne is the only Black girl in her class, and she has worked out that the safest way through school is to go unnoticed, ideally with a book in front of her face. Then a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. He is tall, loud and entirely himself, and Daphne's plan for staying invisible stops working.

She tries to keep him at arm's length, but Connie draws her in, and the two become close. Their families get to know each other as the friends grow up in a city that is restless and changing fast. Between Daphne and Connie, friendship slowly turns into something harder to name.

Then Connie tells her that he and his mother are "nuh land", meaning they are living in England illegally. Daphne understands that she is tied to a home life that could fall apart at any moment. Secrets buried for years in both families begin to surface, and they put the pair at risk of losing each other for good.

This is a love story between best friends, set within a close British-Jamaican community. It covers a decade, moving from the industrial docklands along the Thames to the beaches of Calabash Bay in Jamaica.

Race and class run through it, as do the question of which family a person is given and which they choose, and the question of how much love can survive. The tone is emotional and the plot is carefully built.