Two fourteen-year-old Bretons, in a school-sponsored exercise to learn English, spend the summer in Belfast at the height of the "Troubles". Nicolas stays with a working-class Catholic family, the Devlins, in the Markets, while Chris stays with a middle-class Protestant family, the Nicholls, on the Donegall Road. They have unnerving encounters with British soldiers, and meet a group of young Protestant girls in Botanic Gardens, who invite them to a local club - but they are warned not to go by a member of the Devlin family, who has heard there will be trouble there. The next morning the newspaper reports that two soldiers were killed by the IRA outside that club. In response to the shooting, the army raids the Devlin house while both Chris and Nicolas are there, and Chris facetiously gives