In the 1st-person, Heather (a young mother) shoots Deidre, a grandmother, and her son Clive in their house, fatally. We're led to believe that she wounds herself afterwards.
Then in the 1st-person, Jess Fox, a Bristol-based reporter who was a close schoolfriend, is sent back to her seaside hometown to cover the story. She hopes that this will put her career back on track. She knocks at the door of Margot, Heather's mother, who doesn't let her in. Jess was popular at school. Newcomer Heather was a bit strange, but the 2 became closest friends for a while, Margot becoming Jess's stand-in mother. Leo, Heather's uncle, liked young girls. He lives in Bristol now.
In the 3rd person, Margot takes over the narrative. She visits the hospital where Heather's in a coma. Adam is Heather's husband. Ethan is her son. Jess tries to get into Margot's home again and this time succeeds. She apologises for dumping Heather after Flora (Heather's older sister) disappeared. After a while, Margot agrees to an exclusive deal with Jess to keep other reporters away. They begin to become friends. Jess tends to back away from serious relationships. She doesn't want to be hurt. Her mother remarried (having dated while Jess and Heather were close) and went to Spain. She longs for female company.
Jack, Jess's colleague, is young and gay. His partner's a policeman.
We flashback to when Flora was around, and she went to the fair with Heather. She falls for a fair-worker Dylan who gives her drugs. Heather's so angry she attacks Dylan.
Margot owns/runs a caravan site. Creepy Colin is the only permanent resident. Margot, thanks to her husband's death and Flora's disappearance had a drink with a widower policeman, Gary, who visits again now.
Heather's PoV appears (she's apparently still unconscious in her hospital bed). We learn from Margot that Heather killed her father - an apparent accident with the very gun she more recently used. Margot thought she'd kept it secret but now Gary suspects, and Heather tells us that others know.
When Jess was working in London her boss took the rap for her phone-tapping. Rory doesn't know. She also suspects that the father of the girl whose case involved the phone-tapping might be following her. She thinks she's being stalked and gets a "back off" message. When she tells Rory the whole story he's disappointed. It becomes clear that he wants kids, marriage, and a return to Ireland, but she's not ready yet.
What's the connection between the victims and Heather? Deidre stayed at the campsite 5 weeks before. A note on the flowers outside their house says "one bullet you couldn't dodge". It emerges that Clive sold drugs and that he'd fiddled Adam out of £300 about a dog.
Gary phones Margot to say that some old bones have been found (in Clive's Bristol house we later learn). A rival paper scoops stories. Jess's boss is angry. She thinks Jack might be a rival, scaring her off the case. She makes up with Rory who checks the derelict house opposite, where Jess thinks a stalker lurks. He finds an unconscious drug addict there. Flora. Heather tells Margot she knew Flora was alive. Then there are more twists.
Leo could have provided useful information at the time of the disappearance but chose to save himself even though his niece's life was involved. Some of the more central characters kept their silence for a surprisingly long time too.
Margot's response to her daughters' actions don't convince me. The police aren't mentioned enough. Would a reporter like Jess really be so irresponsible about the message in the flowers? Jess thinks she knows (because of body language, etc) when people are lying. Somehow she knows that Rory knows she's found the ring. People (e.g. Dylan) sometimes use inappropriate vocabulary. A effort's been made to form links between as many of the characters as possible at the cost of believability. Hearts break, ache, race, etc. In chapter 45 alone there's "her heart swelled ... her heart fell ... she hardened her heart against him ... she put a hand to her heart ... her heart full of guilt and sorrow".
Suppose there was no crime. Suppose instead that a wife left home without warning. We could still get the backstories. And though the suspense would be less intense, there could be psychological clues and mysteries to untangle. We'd miss out on interviews (an easy way to infodump).
Other reviews
- Goodreads
- Claire Douglas (The pacing was perfect, the truth being drip fed in a just regular enough intervals to keep me on the hook and still leaving me desperate for more.)
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