No adventure or tragedy had come my way, nor ever would, not in Leopold...Despair hovered in doorways and oozed down telephone receivers. It formed a film over the eyes of those who had lived here forever, who would and could never leave. It was contagious... Without some miraculous intervention, I was in danger of getting stuck here being me for the rest of my life.' South Africa, 1993m and Meg is a restless fifteen-year-old in the midst of smothering social and political turmoil. When your mother is campaigning to educate people how not to die, your own personal anxieties are belittled. Your life made trivial. Then Meg befriends Xanthe. Self-contained, rebellious, achingly cool Xanthe, and she begins to glimpse a life outside of her family. But by stepping away from her mother and into Xanthe's world, Meg is caught up in the chaos of adolescent longing and the pain of betrayal... And she begins to realise that all that glitters is hardly ever gold...