“I don’t belong here,” 13-year-old Jake repeats when he finds himself admitted to the adolescent unit at Whispering Pines Hospital. Despite being so ill he needs to use a wheelchair, he refuses to admit he has an eating disorder, or to share his feelings in either group or one-to-one therapy. Inside, the toxic and ever-present Voice screams at him, insisting he can’t trust anyone.
Writer Maggie Armstrong: ‘I wanted to be a wastrel. I had no ambitions ever, for anything. Is that a symptom of the age?’Astute readers will quickly realise that Molly’s concern about her appearance is not just “regular” teenage-girl angst, although society’s expectations of women certainly play a role . Among her mother’s many terrible utterances in this novel, this one said as Molly lies in a hospital bed: “You’d think being on your feet all day would mean the nurses would be slimmer.
Is it perhaps a little too convenient that Finbar’s mother’s experience echoes Molly’s, or that something as horrific as a traumatic brain injury can lead to two old friends falling in love? Millie’s response is pitch-perfect: “surely if Annie was – is – innocent, someone would have proved it already, and there’d be a podcast or a series or something?” Similarly, her scepticism about ghosts existing makes space for having a go at her dad’s irritating new girlfriend: “if this place is properly haunted, wouldn’t Skye have picked up on it, seeing as she’s always banging on about how she’s such a ‘spiritual person’ and sensitive or whatever?” Asides like this make the time-slip mystery...
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