Winner of the 1999 Whitbread First Novel Award

‘Beautiful and brilliant’ Tony Parsons

Estate agent Frankie Blue is known on his home turf – White City, Shepherd’s Bush – as ‘Frank the Fib’. He’s a liar – but one who always tries to tell the truth. Frankie has been friends with Diamond Tony, a hairdresser, Colin, a computer nerd, and Nodge, a cabbie, since schooldays.

Now they are thirty and trying to live the same life as they did then – drinking, girls, banter, football. Then comes Frankie’s Great Betrayal – Veronica, and marriage, his ticket to a bigger, better grown-up world. From the moment he tells his mates, the whole patchwork of their friendships begins to collapse – revealing the sad, shocking but often hilarious truths that lie underneath.

‘Caustically funny and sometimes very affecting … with sardonic wit and a kind of tough tenderness, Lott portrays people growing up, growing apart or growing together’ Sunday Times

‘Mordantly funny … Observations are vivid, the dialogue crisp and, crucially, the characters are sympathetic’ Tatler