First Published: 2020
This book has hooked me from the very first pages.
In the prologue, which takes place in 1994, Cara, a nine-year-old girl goes to her six-year-old brother, Matty, and wakes him up in the middle of the night. She thinks that they are going to stop someone called Limey Stan. The two children hide behind a thick curtain in the living room, and then they hear some noises. Matty says that he got tangled in the curtain, and Cara tries to help him, but then a noise freezes her.
The novel then takes us to 2019. Cara is thirty-five and while she is out in a pub with colleagues, she gets a text telling her that her mum has died. Little by little we discover that Cara's life hasn't been easy since that night in 1994. Her brother, Matty, died, suffocated in the curtain, and Cara was accused of killing him even though she kept saying that the ghost Limey Stan had killed him. Cara was thought to have mental problems and was sent to a child's psychiatric hospital for two years, during which her parents never visited her. After those two years she was sent to a foster home. Her father died in a car accident, which she knew through social workers, and her mother never tried to contact her. Her foster parents Anne and John were the support that Cara needed.
The message about her mother's death comes from her aunt Karen, and we discover that it was Karen, who persuaded her sister to send Cara away. This was a huge scandal back in the 1990s and Cara had to change her family name to protect herself. Cara wants to go to her mother's funeral, but Karent tells her that it would be inconvenient, but she says that she should go to her mother's will reading, which is what she instructed.
Cara is jittery as she goes to her home town. The encounter with Karen, her uncle and cousin is quite cold. The lawyer reads the will, and Cara is surprised to learn that her mother has left her the house where she lived terrible things. Her first reaction is to say that she doesn't want him, and the lawyer keeps reading, and her mother added a codicil, and if Cara didn't want the house, the proceeds of selling it should go to the psychiatrist hospital where Cara was looked after as a child and the foster charity. Her aunt, uncle and cousin are shocked and express how unfair it is. I have to say that I find this family's attitude horrifying. Cara was just nine when she was sent away, and nobody ever came to see her again. How heartless that is! And how can they say it is unfair of Anita to leave the house to Cara? She was her daughter and was neglected as a child!!!
Cara and Anne, her foster mother who came to the town with her, go to the cemetery where her brother and parents are buried, and there she has a run-in with the local man who looks after the graves. The man gets outraged when he recognises Cara and claims that she should apologise and confess what she did. When they go, Cara has a disappointment when Anne expresses her doubts about her belief that Limey Stan is real. Anne was the only one who so far claimed she believed her, so this comes as a blow.
Cara goes to the house which now belongs to her, and she finds it in disarray as if someone has broken into. When she is there, someone appears. It is Tishk, who lived next door with his parents, and who every girl had a crush on. Tishk says that his parents moved and he is living in the house while he finishes his doctorate.
Now Cara decides to get compassionate leave from work and stay in the house for a few weeks. She is determined to find out the truth about what happened in 1994. I think that what Cara believed was a ghost was a person, but who? Who killed Matty? And why?
Karen has come to the house to tell Cara that she is not welcome and she should go. Otherwise, she will tip off the press, which will make her life hell. I think that Karen is horrible, and almost everybody is, except for Tishk, who tells her that her parents never believed that she had harmed Matty. I really can't understand how Cara's parents could be so cruel to her, getting rid of her and never trying to see her or come back to her life. She was only 9!!!!
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