Their Little Secrets

Sara considers marrying Edward the point at which her life straightened out. The two of them are settled in a quiet suburb with good friends nearby, and the only real pressure on the marriage is how long they have been trying, without success, to have a child.

Then the teenage daughter of their closest friends does not come home. The street fills with police and press, and Sara notices that her husband has started behaving oddly: absences he does not explain, answers that do not match each other.

Vanessa Garbin keeps this one at street level, among neighbours who have known each other for years and are now working out which of them to believe. Sara does her own quiet checking of where people were and when, on the assumption that it will clear Edward, and finds instead that every line she pulls runs closer to her own front door.