Showing results by author "Claire Amarti" in All Categories

"Schoolgirl missing", the ticker reads, and the camera cuts to a girl’s face. Blonde hair waterfalling over her shoulders, serious eyes, lips a little parted like she’s about to speak. That’s when I realize I’ve been holding my breath, because the gasp when I inhale almost chokes me. Sadie Kelly has lost her job. Until last month, she was a teacher at Horton College - the same high school she went to 10 years ago along with her best friend, Fiona. 

Abigail Gibson is gone. The day after Christmas, she walks out of her home in the suburbs, leaving behind a strange note on the kitchen table...and her 10-year-old son, Sam. When her sister Gillian gets the call, she can barely believe it: Abigail has always been a little, well, unreliable, but she hasn’t done anything like this in a decade - not since Sam was born. Now, Gillian and her husband are taking care of Sam while they wait for news of Abigail.

It’s George and Mara Spencer’s 25th wedding anniversary, and the Spencer daughters are finally back under the same roof again: Lottie, the youngest, Mara’s adored only child, and Lottie’s two older half-sisters, Dinah and Vaughan, the daughters of George’s first marriage - a marriage that ended in a terrible tragedy, with the death of his beautiful young wife. In the years since, their father has found happiness again...but on this hot summer day in Birch Bend, when catastrophe strikes at the anniversary party.