It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You let your child out of your sight for a minute – and they’re gone. Rachel Jenner is trying to be both mother and father to her eight-year-old son Ben, since his dad walked out of their lives on Boxing Day. When Ben asks if he can run on ahead to the rope swing at the park, Rachel dithers.
Her mother’s voice wants to say, “No, you’re too little, I need to see you every step of the way.” And yet she knows John, Ben’s father, would want to encourage him to be independent and to take small risks. So she agrees and watches as Ben and his puppy Skittle disappear around the corner of the path ahead of her – and that’s the last she sees of him.
Skittle appears in the park some time later, whimpering and with a broken leg. But Ben has vanished. Searchers find his clothing by the lake and police tell Rachel they don’t believe Ben has had an accident – they think he’s been abducted.
They ask Rachel to appear on television to plead for her boy’s return and they carefully coach her about what she can and cannot say. But Rachel’s grief over the loss of her son, and her fury at the person who has taken him, cause her to go off the script and she rises to her feet, stares straight down the barrel of the camera lens and warns Ben’s abductor that unless he returns her son, she’ll hunt him down and make him pay.
It’s a big mistake – she goes from a mother worthy of sympathy to a vengeful harpy who cannot be trusted. In this age of celebrity, her private pain is made public and she finds herself under suspicion and can’t trust anyone – not even her family or the police. If Ben is to be found, she’s going to have to bring him home all by herself. A powerful page-turner and damning commentary on this age of the internet, where everyone has an opinion and a forum in which they can voice it.
