The lilies seem to flower earlier each year, which frightens me. Its as if time is contracting and going to run out before Ive had a chance to achieve all the things I need to. Before Ive had a chance to be a real person. Ketso worries all the time: about passing Grade 11, about being the head of his family, about his friends and their sugar daddies and most of all about how he can follow his late mothers advice and grow up to be confident and independent. How can he be someone who is stepping solo? Ketsos harsh yet hopeful story reaches a dramatic climax, when a shocking secret is revealed after a hostage situation. Jayne Bauling has won the Macmillan Prize for Africa for a novel, poetry prizes from SAFM and is also a short story author. This novel, with its vivid, convincing and sensitively-drawn characters, is a compelling account of the lives of many children in contemporary South Africa. Professor Andries Oliphant, judge of the MML Literature Awards.