Rose Tremayne seems to have it all: a respected career as a criminal psychiatrist, a devoted husband, three beloved daughters and a life built on helping some of the most dangerous criminals in the country.
Jason Tobias is a charming, manipulative child killer, and he has been Rose’s patient for fourteen years. She argued for him, trusted him and allowed him freedoms others warned against. Then he escapes from Broadmoor, murders a woman in her own home and abducts her five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Jason is caught and returned to custody, but Daisy is still missing, and Rose finds herself at the centre of a public scandal.
As her professional judgement is questioned and her marriage begins to fracture, Rose is forced to confront the possibility that she gave a killer far more of herself than she ever intended.
And then a new patient enters her life. Lily has been accused of killing her mother after years of abuse. Silent and withdrawn, she communicates only through a series of extraordinary drawings, and Rose becomes convinced that Lily is trying to reveal something important.
With Daisy still missing, Jason refusing to give clear answers and Lily sinking further into silence, Rose’s carefully ordered life begins to splinter. She has the uneasy sense that someone is watching her, that someone knows more about her than they should.
And somewhere in the darkness, in the shadows of the past, something is waiting to be remembered…