A Review By Ruth Hunter, BookTime Editor, Bertrams

This explores the dark side of childhood and how deeply it can affect adulthood. Laura appears to live in a perfect world, married to a rich lawyer, with a big house and two pretty children, and plenty of beautiful friends. Then she hears from the mother of Heddy Partridge. Heddy was a girl Laura’s parents forced her to be friends with when they were kids, but Laura mercilessly bullied Heddy for years, making her life hell. Heddy is now confined to a mental hospital, and Laura, initially reluctant to help, finally agrees to see her. This is a superb study of the petty viciousness of middle England, as Laura’s reassessment of her childhood cruelty leads her to come to terms not just with her past, but also the terrible shallowness of her present life. She realises that the perfect world she lives in is just a façade with no emotional depth.