Leah Mercer

I am always with you. I will always be here. This was the promise Ella’s mother betrayed thirty years ago when she walked into the sea, leaving her five-year-old daughter alone in the world. Ella’s been angry ever since, building up a wall to protect herself....

Emily: It’s been a long time since my best friend Ava stopped speaking to me. But I knew I’d find a way back in. When I hear that her daughter won’t sleep at home because of a burglary on the street, I offer to swap houses for a while. Ava is so grateful.

I glance over at Lou’s house as I pull onto my drive, surprised that it is still in darkness. Lou and the kids should have been home from school long ago. I should be preparing a delicious meal for my children as they tell me about their day. But Lou’s car is nowhere to be seen....

Rachel sat at the kitchen table, trying to take everything in. She still couldn’t believe what her father had done. Clutching a faded photograph and a necklace in her hands, all she knew was that in her mother’s final days, she would do anything to protect her....

Ruth has spent every day of the last 15 years wondering why her daughter Isobel left. Walking around the school to which she has given her life, every child she sees reminds her of her family’s bright future, which vanished in an instant....

Ali turned towards the cottage, anger flooding through her. She’d believed she and Meg were friends; that they’d bonded over a vision of motherhood...a world where your baby deserved everything you could give it....

She’s woken up in a life she doesn’t recognise - with a daughter she doesn’t remember....

Discovering that the man she thought she knew better than anyone else is capable of abandoning it all sends Anna reeling....

Zoe knows that it wasn't really her fault. Of course it wasn't. But if she'd just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might have saved him....

The gorgeous French stone villa is just as I remembered it. I was anxious about coming back here after all this time. But as I see the faces of my best friends, I know I made the right decision. A weekend away is just what I need. That was until Frederick arrived…

A bright and welcoming haven, the playgroup sits at the heart of the town, tucked away inside a red-brick building. The Nest should have been the safest place for my rosy-cheeked, pink-obsessed daughter, Florence.