Two timelines - 1978 and 1999. In 1978 Elizabeth (it's her 1st person PoV) meets Rachel. In 1979 a body is found. In 1999 Elizabeth is living near Oxford doing short-term jobs in shops. Another body is found, near the first one. She's worried that this will revive interest in the first body. She had seen a couple in the woods at the time of the murder.
Schoolgirl Elizabeth is podgy, plain and clever. She has low self-esteem. She lives near Chelmsford. Her mother's arty. Her father's a bouncer and stands up for her, not always legally. He leaves the family for Mrs Wright, who's left her husband and daughter Rachel. She's taken her younger daughter Melissa.
Elizabeth wants to be friends with popular Rachel - a crush really. I'm surprised that her behaviour never becomes stalkerish. She helps Rachel with her homework in exchange for company and beauty magazines. Elizabeth visits her father in London. Her mother has tried to clear the family house of his stuff, but Elizabeth wants to keep some things.
Her father moves to Norfolk, then the States. Bob starts sleeping with her mother. She learns from her father that Rachel's father had slept with with wife's sister who was Rachel's biological mother. Rachel had been abandoned when she was 6. Elizabeth encounters Rachel's father in an orchard. Rachel, trying to protect Elizabeth, kills her father (she knew he'd killed before). The 2 girls decide to pretend that the father abandoned Rachel. That evening she has a miscarriage - her father's child.
The 2 girls had kept in touch. In 1999 Elizabeth visits Rachel for the first time in a while. She suggests that Rachel leaves the country, letting Elizabeth take the blame.
It's difficult for children to decide which parent is to blame when parents break up.
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