Ashif Malik, Ash for short, born in Lahore, seventeen, intelligent, good-looking, talented cricket all-rounder and pleasant tenor, is welcomed by the residents of Pepynbridge, a quintessentially English village in Northamptonshire, when in March 2015 he moves to live there with his father, a consultant psychiatrist, his mother and his younger sister, Leela. Ash joins the Abbey choir and, playing for Pepynbridge Firsts, his prowess comes to the attention of Northamptonshire County Cricket Club. But young Ash is not all he seems, as Leela and the more prescient in the village come to suspect. When he falls in love with Sophie Wicken, rising sixteen and daughter of a local farmer, Ash struggles to preserve his cover and events move quickly to a climax that sends shock waves far beyond Pepynbridge.