I always knew that Billy would be found and that he would be dead. I did play around with a couple of scenarios where he was found alive but that would have watered down the emotional journeys that all the other characters go through. They, and their lives, needed to be changed forever by Billy’s death.

5. As a mother yourself, did you find that the writing process and subject matter affected you emotionally?

It did, yes. The subject matter really affected me emotionally as I was writing The Missing and much earlier than that, when I was researching the subject of missing children and read books about Madeleine McCann and James Bulger. I found those books utterly harrowing. I cried, I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t get certain images out of my mind. I knew there was no way I could write a book about a very young child going missing (my son is four) so I chose to make Billy a teenager. I also made him quite unlikeable. It worked for the storyline and it also allowed me more emotional distance than writing about a toddler or pre-schooler would have.

6. What advice would you give to aspiring authors?