Bridget has a secret that she keeps from everyone, even her husband. It threatens to explode when her childhood music teacher, Carmichael, walks into her dress shop. With him is a young girl on the cusp of adulthood who reminds Bridget of herself at that age. Bridget wants him away --- away from her, away from that girl. But Carmichael won’t leave her alone. And Bridget is not a little girl anymore. When he pushes her too far, she snaps. But what she thought was a decisive act only unravels more insidious threats --- more than she ever could have imagined --- and from which no one is safe, not even her family.

When Beth disappears, everyone says she’s run off with another man. But Natalie, her best friend, doesn’t believe it. She’s sure something more sinister is going on. Meanwhile, Victor, one of Beth’s and Nat’s favorite bar patrons, has fallen and ended up in the hospital. When he hears that Beth is gone, he doesn’t buy it either. And slowly, a hazy memory comes back to him. As Nat tries to piece together the events --- and people --- in Beth’s life, it becomes more difficult to discern who can and can’t be trusted. The little town in the English countryside takes on an ominous air, with a threat behind every corner, outside every window. And someone is always watching.

In a dilapidated farmhouse out in the vast waterlogged plains of the English Fenlands, Fran awakes groggily to her baby’s cries one February night and finds the bed empty beside her. Her husband, Nathan, is gone. Moving uneasily through the drafty rooms, searching for her husband, Fran soon makes a devastating discovery that upends her marriage and any semblance of safety. As she tries desperately to make sense of what happened to Nathan, Fran is forced to delve dangerously into the undercurrents of his claustrophobic hometown and question how well she knew him in the first place.

Alison lives her life under the radar. She has no ties, no home, and she spends her days at a backroom publishing job. Which is how she wants it. Because Alison used to be a teenager named Esme, who was the only survivor in a brutal attack on her family. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from her village, changed her name and cut herself off from her past. But soon Alison realizes that that night's events have left a terrible mark on everyone in the village, and she begins to suspect they are all somehow implicated in her family's murder.