An audio book set in Hobart. In the prologue there's a school trip. Sirens.
There are scattered extracts from a coroner's report through the novel but we don't know who dies until near the end.
9 months earlier, Emma (12) is with Grace (43), her plain mother. Emma's the result of a one-night stand that Grace had with Chris, who still does his duties. Emma has serious eating disorder issues related to bullying. Grace is a vetenary doctor. Chris and Grace move Emma to a school where her married lover Ben (a doctor) has a daughter Jasmine. Ben and Grace were friends from 18. He'd told her about meeting pretty Louise. Grace was 21 when her mum died. At the wake, she tried to seduce Ben. He turned her down.
Zoe, an art teacher in her thirties, has been dumped by David after nearly 10 years. She stays with cousin Clare then finds a flat. She works at the school Emma goes to. She meets Nick (a carpenter) at a party and starts sleeping with him.
Imogen is a doctor. Plain, she lost her virginity to Nick and slept with him a further 7 times. She's becoming careless at work, so maybe the "The Accident" is not to do with traffic but at the hospital. She changes her route to work so that she passes Zoe's. When she faints at work, she gives Nick as her contact. The fainting was fake - she just wanted Nick to drive her around.
Zoe tells Nick that David had spend 10k dollars on IVF because of her endometriosis. Clare becomes pregnant with twins.
Emma befriends Zoe at a poetry group that Zoe runs. Emma knows who Jasmine is.
At school, Imogen did homework for several of the boys and gave them blow-jobs. She tries to befriend Zoe. Zoe knows that Imogen and Nick were friends.
Imogen tells Zoe that she tried to cover up a mistake at work. Zoe thinks she should report it. She's worried when she sees Imogen at her school. Imogen threatens to reveal Emma's problems widely to get Zoe into trouble. Zoe phones Nick and Grace suggested they should talk. They immediately drive to the school in separate cars.
Grace is in a hospital bed - dying? She astral travels. Imogen dies - she drove on the wrong side of the road missing Nick but hitting Grace. Zoe splits with Nick, being upset how he and his friends exploited Imogen. Ben and Grace marry. In a post-death chapter Imogen tells us that Ben had harmed her career by giving her a bad reference.
The ending's over-long and the plot becomes more creaky.
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