One afternoon in 1976, teenagers Jean and Tom share an almost imperceptible look across the grounds of Compton Manor, a boarding school for boys with problems. Their gaze marks a secret intimacy, one defined as much by violence as by friendship and desire. As the boys’ connection deepens, so too does the risk that surrounds it. Jean – son of a single mother, Jewish, on a scholarship, forever an outsider – wonders whether the relationship might offer a way out of a life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear altogether?