We all had such high hopes
for this book; the blurb sounded really exciting, and it was a Richard &
Judy Book club pick, so we thought we would all love it.
“Two children get on the train.
Only one gets off...
No one saw it happen.
Your two little girls jump on the train ahead of you. As you try to join them,
the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving you behind.
Everyone is lying.
It's only when you reach the next stop that you truly begin to panic. Because
there aren't two children waiting for you on the platform. There's only one.
Someone is to blame.
Has your other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger?
Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than you think….”
A missing child must be high up on every parent’s worst nightmare
list. For Sive and her husband Aaron, this nightmare is about to become reality.
Aaron Sullivan, a high-flying criminal barrister, is visiting London for a
reunion with his former flat mates. As he catches up with the friends he lived
with twenty years ago, his wife has arranged to have breakfast with one of his
female friends. In the middle of rush hour, Sive tries to negotiate an unfamiliar
London Underground with two small children and a baby in a pram. Her day is
about to be changed irrevocably when she decides to answer her mobile phone,
whilst pushing the pram and trying to keep her eyes on six-year-old Faye and two-year-old
Bea.
Sive encourages the two young children to jump on the tube
train, but before Sive can reach them, the train doors close leaving her
stranded on the platform, and the two youngsters embarking on a journey alone. With
panic rising and not knowing what she should do for the best, a fellow
passenger approaches her and says that a man on board noticed what happened and
would get the children off at the next station, however, when Sive arrives, she
finds only Bea on the platform, Faye is missing, and all two year old Bea can
say is “chase on the train.” It quickly becomes apparent that in a city of
millions, no one saw what happened to Faye.
To her credit, Mara has managed to capture the fear of
being in a large, unfamiliar city, full of crowded, bustling streets and large
parks where a child could be taken to. She has painted a place where kidnappers
could lurk in the shadows, and people turn a blind eye for fear of becoming
involved in something they don’t want to be a part of. But what starts as an
interesting storyline, filled with fear and angst, quickly turns into a book littered
with plot holes which make for an exasperating read.
