Annie is a single, working mother. She had made it to the top of her career playing the markets in the City, but since Percy was born, her marriage to a successful West End lawyer already over after she discovered he was having an affair during her pregnancy, she has found it harder and harder to cope. Strung-out and post-natally depressed she has been summarily sacked from her high-powered job, her once impressive career down-sized to a job in a high street estate agents. Feeling totally inadequate as a mother, torn by guilt at not spending more time with her son and by the need to earn money and maintain a career of some sort, Annie is struggling to keep sane.
Then one morning, peering out of the office window, she sees a couple: a young woman with a baby Percy’s age, apparently the very model of mother and child, and a guy – black, handsome, detached-looking. Annie is curious about them: attracted to the woman by her naturalness with her child, and to the man by his sexual allure. But when he comes into the office asking about studios to rent, Annie starts to move, semi-consciously, down a path that will lead her into a much darker world than she could ever have imagined, a world that will threaten her very freedom, but which will throw into sharp relief the things of value in her life.
Through his remarkably perceptive portrait of Annie, Gareth Creer explores the realities facing single working mothers today but into her story he skilfully weaves a pacey thriller that tips the balance over from the everyday into a sinister, unfamiliar, subterranean world
