a cactus called ironside: everyone has secrets. some more prickly than others.

Memories. Her pants flying from the flagpole? She hopes no one remembers that. The spiky cactus? She can’t forget him. His prickly spines a reminder of the truth that haunts her.

It’s the 1980s. Lady Di has married Charles and Brideshead Revisited is on the TV. Veronica McNamara is dreaming of a universe beyond her mother’s hairdressing salon and her father’s betting shop.

She leaves their thirties semi in search of a toff with a teddy and a stately home. But away from the pebbledash and crazy paving, Barking’s Biggest Bookworm discovers university life is not quite as expected.

As she strives to fit in, Roni is caught up in a series of amusing, absurd and alarming circumstances. An unlikely romance flourishes against the real-life backdrop of Thatcher’s Britain and the miners’ strike.

Forty years on, a college reunion sparks a series of events and Roni realises the past is never far away. She is not the only one who has been economical with the truth and must confront what happened before she can look to the future.

This humorous coming-of-age story about self-realisation reminds us that there’s a prickly cactus on all our windowsills.