
In autumn, Serbia smells of roasted red peppers.
This is how Jelena remembers Serbia, although she left it behind a long time ago. She has tried to forget those days when newspaper headlines wrote about 'Serbian Butchers' and 'Clobba Sloba'. Her home and life are as English as they can be, and she has even changed her name to Helen.
But war finds you anywhere – that’s what the clairvoyant tells her, on the day Jelena hides her children from the suspected war criminal sleeping in the basement of her Hampstead home. And now, to keep them all safe, she will have to become someone new – or perhaps, someone she once used to be.