Beyond the Edge by Alexander Hall

Two very different women in their mid-thirties and a fifteen year-old boy in a south London setting - what links these characters? Eileen, from a strict Catholic upbringing, outwardly vivacious but with terrible secrets from her past, and her best friend Vilde, a much cooler figure and also a victim of a repressive childhood in her native Norway. Between them stands Vilde’s only child Denzil, on the edge between his own troubled childhood and the world of adult awareness. Bullied at school but a dreamer with artistic ambitions, how will he rise to the challenges that fate has in store for him and the two people closest to him?