After You Were Gone by Vikki Wakefield

Publisher's Synopsis

What happens to a family when a child goes missing?

In a busy street market, Abbie lets go of six-year-old Sarah’s hand. She isn’t a bad mother, just exhausted. When she turns around, her daughter isn’t there.

Six years later, Abbie is in love and getting married. But her fragile peace is constantly threatened: not knowing what happened to Sarah is like living with a curse.

Then she receives a phone call from an unknown number.

A man claims to know what happened to Sarah, but if Abbie tells anyone or fails to follow his instructions, she’ll never find out. How far will Abbie go to know the truth?

My Review 

The distress and emotional trauma over the sudden disappearance of a little girl is played out here in Vikki Wakefield’s debut adult thriller. It’s a nightmare scenario that immediately invites you to put yourself into the shoes of Abbie.

It all started with a trip to the local produce markets that 6 year old Sarah didn’t want to go to but her mother, Abbie, insisted. And then, the fateful moment:

“Sarah tugged at my arm. ‘I want to go home now.’
‘Then you’d better start walking.’ I said it without thinking, and picked up a spiky fruit…After choosing six rambutan and two jackfruit, I unfolded a canvas shopping bag and carefully placed the fruit inside. When I turned to speak to Sarah, she was gone.”

This is a story that is told as both a present day narrative and a return to the past. This style ensures we gain a complete understanding of Abbie’s thought processes and what motivates her in her decision making process.

What we discover is that Abbie’s mother is an overbearing opinionated and critical woman. She never misses an opportunity to point out Abbie’s mistakes, making her life a misery. It eventually drives her out of the family home and into a share arrangement with her best friend.

This constant chipping away at her self-esteem accounts for the actions she takes (and also the ones she doesn’t take) later after Sarah goes missing.

Fast forward six years from Sarah’s disappearance and it’s Abbie’s wedding day. Soon after, she receives a phone call from a man who suggests he knows where Sarah is. After all this time she can barely dare to believe that Sarah may still be alive.

From this moment we witness a slow disintegration of Abbie as she is manipulated by the unknown caller. She estranges herself from her new husband and his children, she becomes a virtual recluse and begins to act in an unhinged manner. Her motivation? The chance to be reunited with the daughter she thought she’d lost forever.

For the majority of this book we are left to wonder what’s going on and can it be true? Is Abbie risking her marriage and sanity based on a forlorn hope? Is she doing the right thing by telling absolutely no-one about the mysterious caller?

My impatience with Abbie’s unwillingness to involve anyone else was tempered somewhat by the realisation that there was one purpose at the forefront of her mind. She lost her daughter once and didn’t want to risk losing her for a second time. She was going to do nothing to jeopardise that possibility from happening and she had to be admired for her singularity of purpose.

It must be stressed, there is a very good reason for the to-ing and fro-ing between the present and the past, so it is important that you pay attention to what you’re reading.

The plotting became rather clumsy towards the end with a number of scenarios that challenged the realms of belief a little too much. Suffice to say, I wasn’t altogether satisfied with the way things were left, but then, that’s often the way things work out in real life too, I suppose.

Ultimately I found When You Were Gone to be an engrossing read. It was fast-paced and well structured with the ever-present mystery over who the caller might be and what their motivations are driving us forward.