It was an ordinary school day, the day I lost my little brother. One moment he was on the roundabout and then was gone. Gone. Missing. They all blamed me. I was in charge. Even though I was only ten years old. They sent me away. The hurt, the shame, the questions. The not knowing. I tried to move on. It’s been nineteen years in exile and now somebody wants me back. Someone with a dark secret.

My husband was not a monster. No matter what they say.... The day my husband, Michael, stepped in front of a lorry after being questioned by the police, my world fell apart. He was devoted to me and our six-year-old daughter. But they’d connected him to the disappearance of a young mother from our tiny village.

When single mother Darcy’s son falls from a rope bridge at a local playground, life stands still. She clutches his small, limp body, frozen, until a pair of strong hands push her aside, and she watches as George, a local doctor, saves her son’s life. George, with his twinkling hazel eyes, easy charm and lack of wedding band is almost too good to be true, but coffee becomes lunch, lunch becomes dinner, and soon they can’t go an evening without seeing each other.

Something happened to me when I was nine. My childhood memories before that fateful day are gone. Extinguished. The aftermath has become a living nightmare with a guilt that runs so deep that I’m not sure I can ever tell anyone. I fear I've left it too late. The burden of my secret and the hurt and pain that silence cost each and every member of my family is too overwhelming. But you can't avoid fate and now I have the opportunity to right the wrongs inflicted on us. There was no justice. Not then. Not now. But I can change that.

My darling little boy Albie adores playing at our new neighbours’ house. And after the terrible year we’ve had, I feel so lucky that we can start over in this perfect place, with new friends who treat Albie like the son they never had. He can’t stop talking about the tree house they’re building him, and the cookies they bake together. But as time passes, something starts to feel wrong. Why don’t they ever open the front door more than a crack? They told me they had no children so who does the small pink tricycle I saw in their hall belong to?