Nicole Trope

Every family has secrets, and on the hottest day of the year, the truth is about to come out. As a tragedy unfolds behind closed doors, the dawn chorus is split by the wail of sirens....

I stare at the photo of my beautiful daughter. Her hair is shining and her face is lit up with a smile. The man with her looks so happy too. But my mother’s instinct is screaming. I know something is terribly, terribly wrong. And I know what I have to do…

Megan waits at the school gates for her six-year-old son, Daniel. As the playground empties, panic bubbles inside her. Daniel is nowhere to be found....

When I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s not a sound that disturbs me. It’s a feeling. Silently, I creep to my daughter’s room, breathing a sigh of relief when I see her sleeping, her night-light twirling, butterfly shapes moving their pink wings. Quickly, I lock the door....

My hand trembles as I stare at the anonymous text. On this sunny Saturday morning, our twin ten-year-old boys were playing in the park just down our tree-lined street. But only one of them has come home… and it’s all my husband’s fault.

Caroline twitches aside her curtains to see the new family moving in. A mother – beautifully dressed in expensive clothes – and two young children. Where is her husband, she wonders?

In the middle of the night, Claire wakes up to discover that her beloved daughter, Julia, is dead - and life, as she knows it, is over....

The baby sleeps peacefully, filled with milk and contentment. The man on the bed breathes his way into the darkness, filled with rage....

In their holiday home, a stone’s throw from the beach, Elizabeth dials the police with trembling hands. "My little boy, he’s missing." As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest....

The terrible secrets of a marriage, the love that can turn to desperation, the refuge and heartbreak of being a parent, the fragile threads that cradle a family....

It’s the phone call every mother dreads. "I only went upstairs for a second," she says through her sobs. "She’s gone." When the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. Where is my three-year-old? Then I get a message....

She has my husband. She has my child. She has my life....

Katelyn smiles around at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her 36th birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed....

Where is he? Where’s my beloved child with his father’s blue eyes and a halo of golden curls? My little boy is out there on his own. Please keep him safe, I silently beg. Please, please just keep him safe....

Her chest tightens, her heart speeding up. The kitchen is chaos. She steps on something hard, and looks down. Toy dinosaurs are scattered everywhere. But her son is nowhere–her baby boy is gone....

I gaze at my husband’s once handsome face, so still and pale in the hospital bed. The doctors say I should keep talking. He might be able to hear me even after the terrible accident that left him fighting for his life. But all I have to whisper to my husband is this: "I know what you did"....

Caro and Anna are best friends...they were best friends....

She knows everything about you… but can you trust her? I walk in to my interview with Ava Green and carefully hand over my application. It’s all made up, of course, but Ava doesn’t have to know that.

I am cooking spaghetti, his favourite, while he plays in the garden. But when I look up, he’s gone. I call the police, my hands shaking so much that I hit the wrong digits twice. "My son is missing." When the police turn up, I’m trapped in the web of my lies....

I will not think about it anymore. I won’t think about her. My lost little sister with her beautiful smile, her chestnut-colored eyes. My sister who I couldn’t protect....