Laura thought teaching a bunch of impertinent kids in a failing secondary school was hard enough, but life gets a whole lot more problematic when her mother’s strange behavior starts to have a serious impact on her love life. And, why, with all that going on, does she decide to take on a homeless, disaffected 14-year-old? Has she lost her mind? Her friends certainly think so–after all, what sane person with absolutely no experience of children becomes a single mother to a recalcitrant teenager, overnight?

Nicola Kelsall