Navigating the world of writing and publishing has been made a hundred times easier and more fun thanks to my fellow Debut 2020 authors, all of who are incredible writers and whose friendship has been one of the best things to come out of this tumultuous year.

Once again, my sister Katherine has been an amazing first reader as well as a huge source of end-of-the-phone support. My parents, Brian and Claire, continue to run great PR for my books as well as plugging the plot holes from my sh*tty first drafts. And finally and as ever, all my love and thanks go to my husband Dan, to whom all my books are dedicated in my heart.

p.s. Oh – and thanks to Mimi, my cat.

Extract

If you enjoyed Safe and Sound by Philippa East, don’t miss Little White Lies! Available now!

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Read on for the first chapter…

For the longest time, the police could only find fragments of her, despite all our search posters, all our appeals; a few seconds of grainy, jerky CCTV footage, the tiny handful of frames they retrieved from the hundreds of thousands they trawled. An image of a little girl who stands on the up-bound escalator of a Tube station, her pointed chin raised towards the top of the staircase, her face tilted towards the bright lights.

For years I had hardly anything but those fragments. Those fragments, our memories and a bruising gap. As a family, we floundered in a stubborn, hopeless hoping, with jobs and school and birthdays and Christmases all waterlogged with her loss.

That’s how it was before at least, for those seven years that she was missing. It was when that was over that all the rest began, all that led up to that night on the bridge.

When I had to account for everything I had done.

And, ultimately, everything I had not.

Chapter 1

Monday 27th May:

Day 1

ANNE

They discovered me in my daughter’s bedroom, elbow-deep in boxes. It had been twenty-five minutes from that single, surreal phone call to the moment my husband and the twins arrived home: plenty enough time for me to go wrong. I heard the front door bang and them pound up the stairs, Robert’s heavy boots kicking the carpet and the twins’ feet scrambling behind.

‘Anne?’

‘Mummy?’

‘I’m so sorry about the vase,’ was the first thing I said, before they could even say anything about the miraculous news. ‘It slipped, a complete accident.’

In the doorway the boys stood breathless and wreathed in chlorine. They had been swimming but now their swim had been cut short.

‘The vase?’ said Robert.