You are at work, on a hot summer afternoon, when the phone vibrates in your handbag. Your heart beats faster as you scrabble to find it because somehow, even before you answer it, you know. It’s the call every mother fears. It’s the call you’ve been waiting for. Your daughter is in hospital. She was found this morning, confused and alone. She doesn’t remember anything. You wish you had never let her go away for the weekend. You can’t understand why her brother wasn’t watching over her like he promised, why he didn’t protect her.

Twenty years ago, student Daisy Harrington went out for the evening and never came home. Her body was found a week later. The killer was caught. Case closed. Now, on what would have been her fortieth birthday, her five university housemates are invited to a weekend gathering. None of them want to go. But none of them can refuse—the invitation makes it clear that if they don’t attend, the past they’ve spent two decades hiding will finally come to light.

Your biggest mistake is your sister’s new boyfriend. All the family are gathered to meet my sister’s new boyfriend, including my husband Seth, and it should be a happy occasion. But the moment I see him my stomach drops. It’s Mateo. My worst mistake. My biggest secret. I hoped I’d never see him again–why is he here now? ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ he says. As I look into Mateo’s cold green eyes, I know he’s playing a deadly game. My hands tremble. This man can’t be trusted. He’s pretending not to know me… and he knows I have to pretend, too.

It started out as a party: six little girls gliding and giggling at the ice rink to celebrate Natalie’s daughter’s eighth birthday. But by Natalie’s next head count, it’s turned into a crime scene. Six children went onto the ice—and now there are just five. Nobody saw her niece, Elle, being taken. Nobody saw the person in a cartoon costume lure her quietly away. Traumatised by what happened on her watch, Natalie spends the next decade supporting her sister, Jo, as the years since Elle’s abduction tick by.

Five years ago I buried my husband. Today I saw him with his new wife. ‘Thank you for agreeing to be our wedding planner. Theo is on his way,’ Madison says as we meet to plan her dream wedding. The moment her fiancé enters the room, a newborn baby in his arms, my whole world shifts and I grab hold of my desk to stop myself from falling.

Wife: I couldn’t be prouder of my charming husband and quiet and kind son. I’ve poured everything into my little family, so I choose to ignore my husband’s late-night phone calls and wandering eye. I won’t let anything ruin my perfect life…

I take a sip of coffee as I plan my day. My surgeon husband, Cole, slept at work last night, so I had to get the kids ready on my own, again. I can’t complain, though, I’ve loved him ever since we met, long before he became a famous surgeon and the papers started calling him the pride of the hospital. Our latest family photo hangs on the kitchen wall and I remember that day so clearly. Cole screamed at me over nothing, then apologised saying he was stressed at work. My heart pounded with fear, but I plastered a smile on my face for the sake of my children.

My darling son, Sam, is marrying his childhood sweetheart, and I couldn’t be prouder of the man he’s grown into. Walking out on his abusive father all those years ago was the best thing I ever did. And today he stands, tall and handsome, saying "I do" to my dream daughter-in-law. If I hadn’t pushed them together all those years ago, he might never have found a girl as perfect as Lauren. It’s true what they say, mother always knows best.

My handsome husband Tom. You've given me everything our beautiful son and our perfect new seaside home. I want to trust you, but I know you haven't been honest about why you really wanted to move here. I haven't been honest with you either.

Lucy has a kind and adoring husband, a job she loves as a teacher, and a house on Mulberry Avenue with floaty curtains and the softest bed linen. After her troubled childhood, she knows life will never be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She’s also got Amber, right next door. They never run out of things to talk about. Even if Amber’s life - with her high-profile job and handsome, wealthy boyfriend - is more glamorous than Lucy’s, they share a down-to-earth sense of humor. But then Amber starts to hint that her life isn’t all it seems....

I am on my way home, thinking only of the quiet, happy evening to come, when I see something completely impossible, and my heart stops dead. I would recognise those gorgeous pale blue eyes anywhere. It’s him. The high-school boyfriend I adored… Until the day he vanished without a trace. I run towards him, my pulse racing. He turns, politely, a puzzled look on that familiar face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Do I know you?’ I need answers. I’m certain he’s lying. I just have to prove it.

Carly had thought they’d always live there. The beautiful Cornish cliffside house they’d taken on as a wreck, that Mark had obsessively redesigned and renovated - a project that had made him famous. It was where they’d raised their children, where they’d sat cozily on the sofa, watching storms raging over the sea below. It was where they’d promised to keep each other’s secrets. Until now. Because Mark has fallen in love. With someone he definitely shouldn’t have. Someone who isn’t Carly. And suddenly their family home doesn’t feel like so much of a safe haven.

Verity and Linden Lockwood vowed to spend the rest of their lives together, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do they part. Five years later they've kept their promise to never let their love die, to never slip into becoming one of those couples....But a year after Linden is brutally and inexplicably murdered in their picture-perfect home, Verity's world shatters again. They're not the golden couple she thought they were. Linden betrayed her: he had been having an affair.

It’s the day I’ve been dreaming about my whole life. As I glide down the flower-strewn aisle overlooking the Greek orange groves, in my pearl-encrusted ivory gown, I finally see my fiancé Nik. We look like the perfect couple, but not all fairy tales have happy endings....

Clare is ready for a break. It's been a tough year and now she wants to put her feet up. Arriving at the Italian villa for their summer holiday, she decides it's high time her husband and his family did some of the work. After all, her husband owes her.... Now her brother-in-law Jamie has brought a wife, someone none of them have met before. Ella is everything Clare isn't. Glamorous. Young. Influential. But she knows a secret about Clare. Something that has the power to break the whole family apart.