Frankie Bradley and Charis Watts are unlikely friends with very contrasting backgrounds: Frankie comes from a rich and successful family, Charis from a modest and dysfunctional one. But when they discover the same secret place on Dartmouth estuary a friendship begins bound by a shared humour and imagination. Together they create a secret world with its own language and life seems mesmiritious - meaning as good as anything could ever get. Then confident, beautiful Frankie is diagnosed with cancer and Charis finds she has to support the friend who she has always seen as the stronger one in their relationship.

As well as terminal illness, Pauline Fisk's novel is also about teenage aspirations, family life, failure and success. Most of all this is a story about friendship and Charis, who wants to do something to celebrate her best friend's life, and do it now while she’s still alive.