When Maggie Allen comes out of her coma, ten
weeks after the day of the accident, her memory is hazy. Two things she learns quickly: her child is
dead and buried and her husband has cleared off leaving her homeless, penniless
and at the mercy of the welfare state.
That is not a good place to be when in a
fragile mental state and there are lots of tears amid feelings of loss, guilt
and recriminations. She knows she is in
some way responsible for Elspeth’s death but the chain of events leading to it
has more links missing than in place.
Her condition is all the more frightening
for her as it brings back to mind an earlier period of mental ill-health that
followed an incident in her youth. Is that
connected to the accident somehow? This
is a novel, so probably yes; but how?
The twin mysteries unravel slowly with a
third added for good measure by the periodic insertion of letters written from
a daughter to her mother, neither named.
Are they real or imagined; genuine or a fabrication; who are they from
and to?
Maggie’s frustrations at her inability to
remember or even function effectively in her new circumstances are vividly
portrayed, but possibly overly so. The
unsympathetic reader may say, just get a grip, woman. This means when events unfold and clues lead
to a dramatic conclusion, Maggie’s transformation from quivering wreck to
clear-thinking heroine is remarkable.
Nevertheless the plotting is clever with the
obligatory twists and turns and the ending, though not entirely convincing,
works well enough.
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