SPOILERS!!!
The women in this novel all have secrets. At her mother's bedsite, Anne confesses something she did all those years ago. The neighbours had a nephew that was staying with them, and Anne had a crush on him. They almost kissed once, but Anne had drunk too much and the boy simply helped her upstairs and into bed. Then one night after passing her A-levels, she came home and found that the boy was watching her house because behind the bathroom window Jess was dancing sexily, showing her body to him. That infuriated Anne. Jess had gone to an audition for a film, and when the people from the film called and Anne took the call, she never told Jess or her mother, so Jess missed that opportunity.
From Anne's and Jean's memories we discover that Jess had become wild. Anne was happy at university in Edinburgh where she met Paul, and he proposed. Jess was jealous, and when Anne came home and Jean was happy for her engagement, but Jess was livid and jealous, and they argued. That night Jess went out, and Anne heard her come back and then she heard the door again. When she looked out of the window, all she saw was the taillights of a lorry. The next day Jess was nowhere to be found. The police were called, and Anne told them what she saw, but she didn't see the lorry's licence place number. That was the last thing they saw of Jess, and at present they don't know if she is dead or is living somewhere.
We discover the truth. Jess decided to leave home and took her blue holdall and her passport. She would hitchhike, and there was a lorry but it didn't stop. Then next to her she saw the nephew who had come to see her aunt and uncle, but they were away. Jess told him that she was going away, and he offered to give her a lift. The nephew got angry when Jess laughed when he failed to make love to her, and we understand that he killed her.
Still in a coma Jean also remembers the day that she was hit by the motorbike. Being friendly with the neighbours, Andrew and his kids, Jean went to the house to clean as Drew was struggling to cope with his wife Sally in hospital. Then in a drawer she found a cut-out article about the baby who was found in the phone box, that is, the baby who Jean abandoned. Jean realises that the baby is Drew and he is her son, and the little girls who she had grown to love are her granddaughters. Shocked and elated, she goes to the shop to buy vanilla slices, but she is so stunned that she stepped down the pavement and was run over.
Jean dies, ready to go to the place where her dead loved ones are. Anne tells Drew, who is sorry. And the book tells us that shortly afterwards Drew will find the holdall that Jess had with her behind a fake partition in his house.
I loved the book. Most of the characters were quite horrible, and there were a few things that were difficult to believe. Yet, other than that it was an enjoyable book.
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