Jack and Bet

Jack and Bet are in their late eighties and have been married for seventy years, despite Bet's infidelities and discontents. Marinella is a young Romanian woman who works in a strip club to pay her rent. When Marinella enters Bet and Jack's lives, an unlikely friendship develops; a friendship which unearths old hurts and long-hidden truths. Set in South London's Elephant and Castle as the Heygate estate is demolished, Jack and Bet addresses the housing crisis in London, bringing to life the intimate lived experience of home amongst the harsh realities of urban regeneration. This is a novel about how we love, how we lose, and how we fight to make a place called home.