Fifteen-year-old Danny has just one dream: to be an artist. Living in Toxteth, with his mother and five sisters, Danny meets clever, politically aware Nicole and falls in love. But when Thatcher's government withdraws the Liverpool Art School's funding, Danny slides into apathy, robbing and drug dependency. Nicole and Danny's love affair, played out to a soundtrack of Bowie and Joy Division, is grand, romantic and doomed. Then Danny finds himself sucked into the longest, most exhilarating and frightening day of his life. Set on fire by rioters, Toxteth is ablaze. Danny, transfixed, starts to paint versions of the same picture, over and over again... Can Nicole bring him back from the edge?