First Published: 2023
The novel starts in June 2007.
Jules is in a tent with her grandson, Charlie, and tells him to go to sleep while she steps out for a cigarette. The child protests, and Jules tells him that they don't want to disturb mum and dad, who are sleeping in another tent. When Jules is outside, suddenly her former partner Declan appears, drunk, and Jules tells him to go. The man refuses and Jules has to drag him back to the car. When she is rid of him, she returns to her tent, and at midway her daughter Becky tells her that Charlie is not in his sleeping bag, and that is the last time they see Charlie.
Eleven years later Kate goes to have her morning swim like every day. This time she is caught in a riptide and almost dies. When she wakes up in the hospital, she feels terrible. There is another patient in the bed next to hers. It is Jules and when she learns that Kate is a private detective, she tells her about her grandchild Charlie disappearing. She also tells her that her daughter is now dead. After Charlie disappeared, she got into drugs, and four years ago she killed herself.
Kate agrees to look into the disappearance of Charlie even though the chances of her finding him alive are slim. Kate and Tristan start investigating. They learn that Declan, Jean's partner, was a suspect. The man was found in a ditch and after he recovered, he was questioned but nothing came out of it. They also discover that Jean had Charlie declared dead four years ago, and four weeks later her daughter committed suicide. And in the articles they read in the library there was a social worker who had a bad opinion about Jules and Becky. This woman Anna Treadwell was murdered just weeks after Charlie went missing. Kate goes to talk to Jules, who is in a care home recovering from ulcers in her thighs, and the woman says that Declan is a druggie and womaniser, but she is certain that he has nothing to do with Charlie's disappearance. She also admits that having Charlie declared dead was a mistake, because that stole all hope for Becky, who killed herself as a consequence. Jean says that it was then that she felt that Charlie was still alive. And as for the social worker Jean says that Anna was a pain in her neck and complained about them all the time, but she had no idea that she had been murdered.
This is a very intriguing start. I wonder what happened to Charlie in such an isolated place. It wasn't as if there were people around.
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