New Book - The Things You Didn't See by Ruth Dugdall (Pages 1 - 46)

 

First Published: April 24, 2018

The novel starts on Halloween twenty years ago. 

Holly, who is an eight-year-old, lives in an American airfield with her family, and we imagine that her father is an American pilot. That night Holly follows her brother Jamie outside. He is annoyed but Holly tells him that their father won't like it. Then Jamie's friend, Carl, who is a bully appears. He is not pleased with Holly either. Then they walk to the farm that is annexed to the airfield, as there are rumours that it is haunted. They walk into the barn, where they are met by Ash, who Holly knows has been a target of Jamie and Carl's mockery, and he tells them that they can wait for the ghost to appear, and Holly starts to feel afraid. She notices that both her brother and Carl have the air guns hidden under the jackets. When some kind of ghastly apparition walks towards them, they shoot, and the alleged ghost falls and its chest starts bleeding.

The novel moves forward in time. It is ten years later, and Holly is now a parademic trainee, and we learn that since she was eight, she has suffered from synaesthesic. On Halloween she hooks up with Leif, a student who is also her neighbour, and he is also some kind of policeman. After she spends the night with him, she gets a call from Jon, her supervisor, who tells her that there has been a suicide attempt, and this could be her chance to see a case. When he gives her the address, Holly realises that it is the farm that she used to know as a child.

The narration alternates between Holly and Cassandra. Cassandra is the daughter of the woman who tries to kill herself. That is what her father tells the police and the parademics, but Cassandra thinks that her mother could never have tried to kill herself. She tries to tell everyone that her mother didn't do it. We learn that Cassandra has had mental problems and was sent to a mental hospital. Before her mother, Maya, was taken away by the ambulance, Ash, who was one of the children twenty years ago, appears, demanding to be there, and Cassandra sends him away. He is the housekeeper's son, and now he helps Cassandra's father on the farm.

Interesting start. I wonder what has happened to Maya and who shot her if it was not her.