An audio book. In the first chapter, a sort of overture, Gemma Woodstock recalls episodes concerning Rosalind/Rose - from school, in the autopsy room, etc. It's set in Australia about a fortnight before Xmas. Gemma is 28, a mother and a detective. Rosalind, an ex-classmate then teacher, has been found dead in the lake. Gemma seems to have been rather embarrassingly obsessed with her. She also fancies her married English work partner Felix something rotten. On the morning of the body's discovery she has a late period or early misscarriage. We learn that she was raised by her father from when she was 13, that she experienced sexism initially at work. Jacob, her boyfriend at school, committed suicide 3 weeks after they split up (he'd begun to see Rose). Scott asks her to marry him. She'd prefer to marry Felix (though he has 3 teenage daughters)
In chapter 2 a jogger, Conner, sees the corpse. The language goes funny - "Long-stemmed red roses bob across the top of her watery grave. A cluster of swans watches Conner from under the old wooden bridge. One of the birds lets out a low haunting cry". Using the phrase "watery grave" sounds especially inappropriate to me - journalistic language rather than Conner's or the narrator's. A storm-water drain leading to the lake is mentioned twice near the start - a "gaping eye".
The victim belonged to a rich family, though recent business ventures are murky. She was very pretty but beyond the surface, difficult to know. She had to leave her first teaching job when rumours started of her having an affair with a schoolboy. The post-mortem reveals that the father of her siblings might well not be her father, and she was 10 weeks pregnant.
During the first interview with the bereaved family "Outside a bird swoops suddenly towards the pool and flits across the surface". I decide to keep a lookout for bird imagery.
Jacob's younger brother Rodney had played the Romeo character in the school play (an adaption by Rose) that premiered at the school on the night of her death.
Gemma had friends at school but she's lost touch. She doesn't really have friends now. She's under pressure from other mothers to have a 2nd child. An Xmas party revives old memories. Gemma's little boy Ben is abducted by a woman claiming to be his grandmother, then is returned after a few hours. Gemma tries to downplay it, not telling her father. It's not convincing. Surely abduction is a high risk action. What's the point?
I like the way that new possibilities gradually emerge - loose ends and dead-ends maybe, but when there aren't any obvious leads it's not surprising that straws are clutched at. There are short chapters from outside PoVs - a teacher who has seen things, a coffee-bar manager who often sees Felix and Gemma together, a despairing Jacob, a shop-keeper.
Halfway through the book it's Xmas. We learn that Gemma and Scott haven't had sex for 6 months, that Felix's oldest daughter might have seen Gemma and Felix outside a hotel, that the headmaster was Rose's father (why did the headmaster only say this now?).
The novel sags at this point, but so does the case. On 31st Dec, Felix breaks with her. On 1st Jan Scott breaks with her. There's a sudden acceleration towards a satisfying end. Bird imagery has the last word. When Gemma's at Jacob's graveside Two little sparrows near my feet weave around each other, playing an elaborate game of chase before jumping into the air and flying into the sky".
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