Jay and his older brother Laurence are coping with their mother's alcoholism and with being moved from house-to-house and school-to-school. Indeed, Laurence is even doing quite well towards winning a holiday on a radio quiz show. But when the head of their household vanishes, and they have to cope without Mum at all... that's a different story.

Aged fifteen and six foot tall, Laurence has long had to leave childhood behind. When Mum can't work an early cleaning shift, he does. Jay is six. Laurence takes him to and from school, getting into trouble for being late to his own class. When their mother doesn't come home from the chip shop shift one night, it's nothing new. But the longer her absence goes on, the more Laurence worries about being split up from his little brother. He just has to hold it together until Mum gets back... despite the nosy neighbor, the lack of money, the nightly phone calls to the radio show.

FIFTEEN DAYS WITHOUT A HEAD tells of a stubborn, smart boy's determination to make it work. And as time goes on, he realizes that some abnormal event has occurred. If his mother had been in an accident the police would have been around by now. So - where is she? His teenage pals, a boy called Han and a girl called Mina, have no idea how bad his life has become, and he's too afraid to tell. Families slip through the cracks in modern England, but how many, and how badly?

Dave Cousins grew up in Birmingham and moved to London. He paints the realities of modern life along with the comedies; little Jay's obsession with Scooby Doo, to the point of pretending he's a dog, is often hilarious, and the bogeyman of the social worker turns out to be not nearly such a bad thing. We despair and cheer equally as we read FIFTEEN DAYS WITHOUT A HEAD, a fine read for young adults or adults.