Cass is in her final year of school and is about to take her Leaving Cert; she’s hoping to get the grades to go to Trinty college with her best friend, Elaine. Elaine is beautiful and popular, but she quickly becomes jealous when their glamorous substitute teacher takes a shine to Cass’s poetry. Elaine begins to distance herself, and even though Cass is becoming friends with the school “weirdo” she instead chooses to win Elaine back. She joins her at the local dive bar where they’re served alcohol and she eventually gets a boyfriend, Rowan, even though she’s indifferent to him. She does whatever she can to win Elaine’s affection, but her reliance on alcohol increases. Meanwhile, she tries as much as she can to avoid her home life: her parents are constantly fighting as her father, Dickie’s, garage fails to bring in the kind of money her mother Imelda is used to.
During all these arguments, her younger brother PJ is often ignored. He plays a lot of video games and even makes friends online – he doesn’t have many in real life. He begins talking to a boy called Ethan and soon relies on him for comfort. His real-life friend, Nev, is not comforting at all. In fact, he bullies PJ and says rude things about his family. In a bid to win Nev’s friendship, PJ shows him to the bunker where he knows Cass and her friends go to secretly drink. When Nev is unimpressed, PJ shows him a new housing estate in the woods, constructed by Big Mike, Elaine’s father. The houses are yet to be sold and should stand empty, but there’s a beautiful girl living in one of them, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Occasionally, another man, heavy with tattoos, shows up to sleep with her. Nev wants to watch but PJ makes them runaway.
Imelda is incredibly beautiful, and the village has always thought of her to be somewhat stuck up because of it. However, she comes from humble roots, despite how much of Dickie’s money she tries to spend now. Her father, a petty criminal, struggled to raise her after her mother died, so her Aunt Rose took her in. Her brothers stayed with their father, and went on to lead similar lives, but with Rose, Imelda had new opportunities. Rose was also well-known for being magical, people would come to her for palm readings and predictions, and some local women would come for abortions. When she was a teenager, Imelda met Frank, the star GAA player and village heartthrob. Despite coming from different backgrounds – him being middle class, his father owning the local garage, and his older brother Dickie off to study at Trinity – they fell in love.
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