I have always been curious about cases where a person goes missing, never to be found. Just knowing someone, somewhere knows what happened. How do they live with themselves? How do they lead a normal life with family, friends, a career? For me this was very much influenced by the case of Gennette Tate in a small village in Devon in 1978. I was eleven years old and can remember reading about it every day in the headlines for weeks; in particular the Western Morning News, which my parents had delivered each morning. I found it incredulous how she could vanish into thin air in the middle of the afternoon whilst riding her bicycle, minutes after talking to two friends. Her disappearance is surrounded in mystery to this day.

 

In my book I wanted to expand on this further. To try and feel what it must have been like for the other people who were with Cerys, the girl whose disappearance is central to the story. Not just her parents but her girlfriends, the other campers and friends they had met on holiday, her boyfriend at home... and how it still  affected them thirty four years later.