The Girls in the Garden

Clare Wild moves with her daughters, Grace and Pip, into a flat on Virginia Park, a walled-in shared garden in London, surrounded by the houses of the families who use it. She wants a fresh start after her husband's mental illness broke up the family.

The girls quickly join the other children who roam the garden, and the neighbours seem warm and generous. But the garden has a past, and the midsummer party held on Grace's thirteenth birthday ends with a terrible discovery.

The book is a domestic mystery told in three parts: the event itself, the events that led up to it, and the aftermath. The narration moves between the adults and the children of the square, so the reader sees the same community from both sides of the garden gate.

As the investigation proceeds, old resentments and carefully kept secrets among the residents come out one by one. The sunny, close-knit place Clare chose for her daughters starts to look very different, and the question is what the neighbours have been hiding.