Part 1: Leon, Jake & Carol
The Opening: Life with Carol
The novel opens with nine-year-old Leon living with his mother Carol and baby half-brother Jake. Leon is mixed-race — his father is Black and absent, his mother is white. Jake is fully white, fathered by a different man. From the first pages, De Waal establishes Leon as a young carer — he feeds Jake, changes nappies, and shields the baby from Carol’s increasingly erratic behaviour.
De Waal uses Leon’s child perspective to show neglect without naming it. Leon doesn’t understand that his mother is struggling with mental health and substance issues — he simply adapts, taking on adult responsibilities because no one else will.
Carol is not presented as a villain. De Waal shows her as a woman overwhelmed by poverty, isolation, and untreated mental health problems. She loves her children but cannot care for them. Her decline is shown through Leon’s eyes: unwashed dishes, curtains drawn all day, Carol sleeping while Jake cries. The reader understands what Leon cannot — that this household is heading toward crisis.
Leon’s Fierce Protection of Jake
The central relationship in Part 1 is between Leon and Jake. Leon’s love for his brother is absolute and physical — he holds Jake, whispers to him, makes him laugh. De Waal establishes this bond so powerfully that its later destruction carries enormous emotional weight.
Physical closeness: Leon is constantly holding, carrying, or lying beside Jake. De Waal uses tactile language — “warm,” “soft,” “tucked in” — to show love expressed through touch rather than words.
Responsibility: Leon takes on a parental role. He knows Jake’s feeding schedule, recognises different cries, and instinctively prioritises Jake’s needs above his own.
Promises: Leon repeatedly promises Jake that he will look after him. These promises become tragic as the narrative progresses and Leon loses the power to keep them.
Leon’s identity: Being Jake’s brother is central to who Leon is. Without Jake, Leon loses his sense of purpose and belonging.
Carol’s Deterioration
De Waal charts Carol’s decline through a series of increasingly alarming scenes, all filtered through Leon’s limited understanding. Carol stops cooking. She sleeps for days. She brings home men who frighten Leon. She disappears, leaving the children alone. The prose becomes fragmented and anxious, mirroring Leon’s growing fear.
De Waal never explicitly states Carol’s diagnosis. Instead, she shows the effects of mental illness and substance abuse through a child’s confused perspective. This technique creates dramatic irony — the reader sees what Leon cannot.
The dramatic irony is central to De Waal’s method. When Leon describes Carol being “tired” or having “medicine,” the adult reader recognises depression, substance use, or both. This gap between Leon’s innocent narration and the reader’s understanding generates both empathy and anguish.
Social Services Intervene
The crisis point arrives when Carol is found unable to care for the children. Social services intervene. Leon and Jake are taken into care together — initially to a temporary placement. Leon is told this is temporary, that he will go home soon. De Waal shows how the system speaks in reassuring language that masks permanent decisions being made behind closed doors.
De Waal contrasts the warm, physical language of Leon’s inner world with the cold, bureaucratic language of social workers. Words like “placement,” “contact,” and “permanency” are used by adults to describe devastating changes in Leon’s life. He doesn’t understand these words, but the reader does.
This contrast highlights the power imbalance between Leon and the adults who control his fate. He has no voice in the decisions being made about him. The child’s perspective forces the reader to experience this powerlessness directly.
Part 1 ends with the brothers still together but the reader sensing that separation is coming. De Waal builds suspense through small, ominous details: social workers whispering, meetings Leon isn’t told about, adults exchanging looks over his head.