Case File: Stranger Child

People often ask me how a book begins. Not the plot – the moment before the plot. The single image that pops into my head, or a bizarre idea about strange people. These Case Files posts are my attempt to answer that question, one book at a time.

The Inspiration

Stranger Child began with an image of a woman standing at a kitchen sink on a dark, stormy day, rain hammering the window, her baby son sitting happily in his high chair behind her. And in the glass, in the reflection of the room, a pair of eyes watch her.

She spins round. It's a girl. She looks about thirteen, scruffy, pale, grubby. A girl she has never seen before in her life.

That was all I had. But the questions came immediately. The family lives in the middle of nowhere, so how did this child get there? Why is she here? The woman doesn't know the child – but the child must know the house.

The girl refuses to speak but writes five letters on a piece of paper. TASHA. And Emma knows who this is. Missing since she was six, she is Emma’s husband’s daughter, never seen since the night her mother was killed in a car crash. It seems something terrible has happened to her during those years, because someone must have known who she was. 

I didn't know what had happened or where she’d been; at least, not immediately. The only question that mattered was: why was she back? And why didn’t she speak?

Everything else was built from that single idea.

The Characters

Some characters arrive and wait patiently while you work out who they are and what to do with them. Tasha arrived fully formed and immediately made herself difficult.

Thirteen years old, swamped in an oversized coat that wasn't hers, defiant, closed-off, sly. A girl who had learned that trust was a liability. I knew from the beginning that she was going to be complicated – not easy to love, not easy to root for. And that was the challenge, because the whole novel hinges on the reader falling in love with her anyway.

To make that work, I had to fill in the missing six years. Whatever had happened to Tasha, it couldn't have been unrelentingly bleak. I didn’t think I could cope with that.  And it had to seem like the norm to her, the only life she knew. I wanted readers to recognise the moment when Tasha glimpses what her life could be like if she were part of this family again, rather than being forced to do things she knows are wrong. She is suddenly truly conflicted. She could return to the world she knows. Or maybe – just maybe – someone might actually want her.

Emma, her stepmother, faces a different kind of problem. She is practical, capable, not easily rattled. But she has a baby son to protect, and now there is this damaged, difficult child in her house – a child who causes chaos, cannot be trusted easily, and might be putting everyone at risk. Emma's fear, coupled with her growing realisation that Tasha is also just a child who deserves love, created a tough balancing act: empathy in the foreground, while fear lingered beneath. And of course, it helps that she knows brother of her ex-fiancé, Jack. But calling him – DCI Tom Douglas – is a risk.

Then there are the men behind everything that is happening, and here the research took over. One of the most striking things I noticed when exploring organised crime networks was how entirely ordinary the most dangerous individuals can appear. Finn McGuinness exemplified this. Smart overcoat, red tie, the kind of man you'd expect to see approving your mortgage – except for the cold black stare and the gun concealed beneath the jacket. Above him, Guy Bentley, refined and composed. Below him, Rory Slater – stocky, greasy, and totally lacking sophistication. His method of control was cruelty, and children were useful to him in ways I found genuinely disturbing to research.

Five people. Five secrets. One child caught in the middle.

The Locations

Once I knew who these people were, I needed to find where they operated.

Emma’s family home sits at the heart of the story – a house that should feel safe and increasingly doesn't. But I needed somewhere else – a place that would fill Emma with dread, and that sent me on a research trip to an underground storage vault in Manchester. Originally built as an air-raid shelter during the Blitz, it's now a labyrinth of cold, tile-lined corridors and stainless steel. The silence down there has a dead quality that I couldn't have invented. As soon as I visited, I knew Emma would have to go down there alone at night. I kept thinking about how I would feel, and I found it hard to be rational about it even in daylight.

Then there's the cemetery – chosen for practical reasons. No CCTV. Multiple quick exit routes. I had a specific spot in mind, just off the M60. Standing there in the dark, masked figures by a van, yellow headlights piercing the night. The total silence of a transaction that can only happen where no one is watching. Except, as it turns out, that isn't entirely true – but I'll say no more about that.

The Research

Most of the police procedures in this book came from my adviser, a former detective chief inspector, and I'm always grateful for that relationship because it keeps the investigative detail honest. But the research that stayed with me was into organised crime networks and how they operate – particularly how they use children. The roles assigned to them, the way they are controlled, the way they are made to believe that the life they're living is simply the way things are.

That research gave me Tasha's interior world – the logic she operates by, the way she reads situations, what she expects from adults.

The Moral Dilemma

The mechanics of Emma's dilemma aren't something I can explain here without revealing the story. But the emotional core of this book isn't really about what Emma does or doesn't do. It's simpler than that.

The question is, can you love a child who frightens you? Can you choose to love someone who has given you every reason not to trust them, who has put your family at risk, who may not believe they deserve love and will do everything in their power to prove it?

And on the other hand, can Tasha forgive herself enough to accept that someone might genuinely want her, care for her?

These are the questions the novel truly explores. I still remember drafting the final chapter, feeling certain I knew what would happen to Tasha. Then I started to write – and everything shifted.

If you've read Stranger Child, I'd love to know what stayed with you. And if you haven't – I hope you will.

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