This is for anyone who sweated their way through the summer of '76, as well as readers of Jonathan's Coe's The Rotters' Club, Martin Amis's Success and Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. It's the long, hot summer of 1976 and Adrea is falling in love for the first time, while nursing the decrepit residents of Heron Close, a care home in Chalk Farm. This is the summer that sees Blue Oyster Cult and Supertramp superseded by Patti Smith and the Stranglers, and as the heat rises in and out of the Roundhouse, the lives of Heron Close's residents and carers alike are about to blister and burn. And right in the midst of all this humdrum squalor, like the sun's rays beating back the darkness, are Adrea and Evan, about to let in the light and heat - with inflammatory results.