I used to think that perhaps everything that was happening to me - my whole life - was just a memory. As if one moment I could be eleven, and playing in the sun, and the next I might - wake up, somehow, and find I was old and dying, and the day when I was eleven was just a bright, clear memory... Alex is an artist, preparing for an exhibition to mark the peak of his career. His life seems ordered and complete, but an impulsive trip back to the Italy of his childhood forces him to explore the unresolved questions of his past. There, in those seemingly innocent days, as he swam and played and explored the wild countryside with Jamie and Anna, Alex must surely find the key to so much of his later life. He has to experience again his first friendship with Jamie, and his first love for Anna; and to put together the pieces of a story which brought the three of them together more closely than they could understand, with a bond which seemed innocent but which resulted in tragedy. In this disturbing new novel Guy Burt explores the darker side of childhood love and friendship, and the fear and pain of growing up. Of Guy Burt's first novel, After The Hole, the critics wrote: 'A scintillating d but...Burt's will be a name to watch' - Daily Mail 'Compulsively sinister first novel ' - The Times 'Insidiously brilliant' - The Independent