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A mysterious haunting novel starring a cast of brilliant eccentrics bound together by a missing girl

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´An intricately crafted novel, sharp-eared, current and full of heart´ Guardian, Books of the Year

A spirited fourteen-year-old, Fay, goes missing from a Lincoln council estate. Is she a runaway, or a victim - another face on a poster gradually fading with time? The story of her last few days before she vanishes is interwoven with the varied lives of six locals - all touched in life-changing ways.

David is on a family holiday on the bleak Lincolnshire coast; Howard, a retired steel worker with some dodgy friends; Cosmina, a Romanian immigrant; Sheena, middle-aged and single, running a kiddies´ clothes shop; Mike, owner of a second-hand bookshop and secretly in love with Cosmina; and Chris, a TV-producer-become-monk struggling to leave the ordinary world behind. All are involuntary witnesses to the lost girl; paths cross, threads touch, connections are made or lost. Is Fay alive or dead? Or somewhere in between?

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"Twenty-five years on from his spectacular debut novel, Ulverton, Thorpe has produced a book that resembles and rivals it... With tremendous flair, Thorpe opens up a vista of present-day middle England." Peter Kemp Sunday Times, Books of the Year

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