Revealed

The main protagonist, Arran Taylor, finds himself questioning where his relationship with Alison, his long time girlfriend, is exactly leading. He also finds himself intrigued by Tom Rustle, a fellow art student who moved to the college part way through the previous year. But Arran doesn't understand why he finds Tom intriguing. After all, they have never actually spoken to each other.

Arran's parents are separated and he lives with his father, simply because his father lives closer to college than his mother does. Arran has got used to being from a broken home and hasn't even considered questioning why his parents separated in the first place.

When Arran and Tom are paired together for an Art project, Arran finds Tom to be almost impossible to get to know. He appears to be a loner, and seems reluctant to divulge any information about himself. Although we do eventually find out that Tom may be gay, something that, much to Arran's apparent confusion, Tom isn't prepared to either admit or deny.

As the college term progresses, Arran slowly finds out a few bits of information about his art project partner. For instance, he is also from a single parent household, in his case living with his mother; he is a cousin of Vicky, one of Alison's long time best friends; and Arran finds out that Tom may have been bullied at his last school, plus it appears he may also be being bullied in the new neighbourhood that he and his mum have moved to. But he also finds himself getting more and more frustrated at just how difficult it proves trying to get any information out of Tom, himself.

Arran finds out that his father is apparently seeing a woman, and appears to be being somewhat secretive about it. But he does have a suspicion that this woman may be a good bit younger than his father. And it doesn't help that his best friend, Mark, has recently become much more involved in his relationship with his girlfriend, Jennifer, another long time friend of Alison's. So Mark isn't giving Arran the attention that he feels he should be getting from his best friend, and seems almost dismissive of Arran's concerns.

Towards the end of term, shortly before the time for Arran and Tom to give their Art presentation in class - a presentation that will involve several naked drawings and paintings of Tom against an industrial background - Arran is rudely awakened one morning by the police hammering on the front door of his house looking for his dad.