The telephone rings at ten to five in the morning and ex Private Investigator, and Psychotherapist, Chrissy Jo Hart knows before she lifts it. Her oldest friend is dead in a London flat, and there is a note at the scene with her name on it. She has the sight. She spent her whole first life pretending she didn't, and it has cost her a headache every day since - because you're let up out of your own body to see, and each time it's a little harder to come back down and be only a woman on a bench.
She has not been touched by a man in twenty-two years. Not held. Not kissed. Not once, since she came back from Ireland with a baby under her heart and a door shut in her face. And in the wood above the village, girls have been going missing for nineteen years - on the same two dates, year after year, while four different men have gone to prison for it. This isn't a man. This is a rota. Then the owner of the great house on the hill turns his whole attention on her, in front of everyone, on a sunny green.
And the trap closes - not with a grab, but with a greeting. Because there is nothing on this earth more dangerous than a man who knows the precise size and shape of the hole in you, and arrives, so gently, so generously, with something bright to fill it.
The telephone rings at ten to five in the morning and ex Private Investigator, and Psychotherapist, Chrissy Jo Hart knows before she lifts it. Her oldest friend is dead in a London flat, and there is a note at the scene with her name on it. She has the sight. She spent her whole first life pretending she didn't, and it has cost her a headache every day since - because you're let up out of your own body to see, and each time it's a little harder to come back down and be only a woman on a bench.
She has not been touched by a man in twenty-two years. Not held. Not kissed. Not once, since she came back from Ireland with a baby under her heart and a door shut in her face. And in the wood above the village, girls have been going missing for nineteen years - on the same two dates, year after year, while four different men have gone to prison for it. This isn't a man. This is a rota. Then the owner of the great house on the hill turns his whole attention on her, in front of everyone, on a sunny green.
And the trap closes - not with a grab, but with a greeting. Because there is nothing on this earth more dangerous than a man who knows the precise size and shape of the hole in you, and arrives, so gently, so generously, with something bright to fill it.
