In a shockingly twisty, addictively dark, engrossingly intense psychological suspense, a woman’s world is shattered when her sister returns 16 years after she was abducted from their childhood bedroom.
Incest, abduction.
“Do you have a sister, Ms. Fairview?” The little girl’s question, in all its buttery innocence, slices through me, and the answer catches in my throat. It isn’t as simple as yes or no. It hasn’t been, in nearly sixteen years.
The evening Caitlin and Olivia’s parents leave them to go to a dinner party, both girls are bubbling with excitement. At ages 10 and 13, they are at last old enough to stay home alone. After all, in their idyllic town no one even bothers to lock their doors.
As the summer light fades, after TV and popcorn, the sisters finally put themselves to bed. They’re unaware of the figure watching them through an open window. Or of the back door opening once they’ve fallen asleep.
When their parents return, they will find Olivia’s bed empty. Their golden-haired, long-limbed, eldest daughter gone. Never to return. Until now.
But is the woman who claims to be Olivia all she seems? Is everything Caitlin said she saw that night the whole truth? Their family have dreamed of this moment, but both sisters are keeping more than one secret. What price will they all pay if they end up believing the wrong daughter?
Taste the very first page
They are sisters. They are aged ten and thirteen years old. They are home alone. Neither girl notices the man who watches them from the woods behind their house.
The eldest, Olivia, is in charge while their parents are out. There is money for pizza on the kitchen counter and a list of emergency phone numbers pinned to the fridge. Olivia doesn’t even glance at them; Blossom Hill House is in Stonemill, an idyllic market town in the heart of Somerset, a place where people feel safe enough to leave their doors unlocked.
At six in the evening, the girls slip on their shoes. Despite instructions to be in bed by nine, Olivia has decided she will let Caitlin stay up half an hour later and, as she takes her sister’s hand and walks out into the summer sunshine, her parents’ warnings to stay inside are blown from her mind like dandelion clocks.
The girls close the navy-blue front door with the brass-bee knocker, but do not lock it. Caitlin glances up, missing the pretty pink petals that drift down from the cherry blossom tree in their garden during spring. They turn right out of the gate, then left onto the road that leads to the farm shop. They use the pizza money to buy sandwiches; thick, crusty bread, smoked ham and strong cheese. Next door, at the bakery, they buy rich, dark chocolate brownies and icy bottles of lemonade. They leave with their haul and race to the wildflower meadow. Here, among baby-blue forget-me-nots and bright bursts of yellow buttercups, they while away hours on sun-warmed grass. The summer stretches out before them, a blank canvas, waiting to be painted with possibility and adventure.
Olivia turns her face to the sky and loosens her thick, golden…
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