The Missing: The gripping psychological thriller that’s got everyone talking... (34 page)

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Book club questions for
The Missing
by C.L. Taylor

1. As Claire searches for Billy, she realises she didn’t really know her youngest son at all. Was that Claire’s fault, or is this typical of the dynamic between mother and teenage son?
2. The novel is interspersed with WhatsApp messages. How effective did you find this very modern literary device?
3. There are several clues that Mark might have something to do with Billy’s disappearance. When did you pick up on the signs?
4. What did you think of the character of Kira? And when did her behaviour make you suspicious?
5. The novel tackles the growing problem of online hard-core pornography and its implications. Did you find this added a very topical element to the story?
6. How does Claire change over the course of the book? What would you do if you began to suffer such terrifying episodes of amnesia?
7. Did the subject matter make you think more closely about your own family, and the secrets and lies that can be harboured?
8. What did you think of the ending? Would you have liked it to end differently?
9. What do you think the future holds for Claire and her family?
10. What other similar books would you recommend to people who enjoyed
The Missing
?

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to Caroline Kirkpatrick for her support, help and insightful editorial skills. Caz, you helped shape
The Missing
into a book I’m truly proud of. A big cheer for everyone else at Avon, HarperCollins for all their hard work behind the scenes, particularly the sales and digital marketing teams, and to LightBrigade for their PR brilliance. A massive hug to Maddy, Thérèse and Cara at the Madeleine Milburn agency for your guidance, support and expertise. I’m so proud to work with such a fabulous group of women.

I’m indebted to the people who gave up their time so willingly to help me with my research. It’s important to me that my books are as accurate and realistic as possible and I couldn’t have written
The Missing
without you. Thanks to Stuart Gib for answering my enormous list of questions about police procedures, Dr Jez Phillips for kindly giving up so much of his time to help me understand dissociative amnesia, DK Green for talking to me about counselling and ethics, Torie Collinge for giving me the low-down on life as a pharmaceutical sales rep, Andrew Parsons for pharmaceutical advice, Lee Stone for his train expertise, Dr Charlotte McCreadie for answering my GP questions, Michael Jones for explaining paramedic procedure and to Joanna Purdue for being a mobile phone guru. Thank you Ray Wingate for answering my questions about CCTV – unfortunately those scenes didn’t make the final cut but I’m still very grateful for your time. I’d also like to thank Susannah Thomson who ferried me around in her car so I could research some of the Bristol settings in the book. The black bag we saw floating in the river made it into the Avonmouth scene!

A special mention goes to Pierre L’allier who won a mention in the acknowledgements as a result of his very generous bid in the Authors for Nepal Auction. Thank you too to Clare Christian who was equally as generous in supporting the Clic Sargent auction. She named the character Edie Christian. I hope your daughter enjoys the book, Clare.

So much love to my parents Reg and Jenny Taylor whose never-ending support (and babysitting help!) make it possible for me escape from my desk so I can go out and about and meet my readers and other authors. You’re the best! Love too to my sister Bec and brother Dave for amusing me on WhatsApp and keeping me grounded. A massive hug to my extended family – Sophie, Rose, Leah, Suz, LouBag, Ana, Angela, Guin, Steve, Nan, Ali, Margaret, Sam and all my lovely uncles, aunties and cousins (there are a lot of us). Big kisses to my amazing friends – Rowan, Julie, Kate, Miranda and Tamsyn – for always being there. Love you girls. There are so many other people I’d like to thank but I’m running out of space so thank you to the CAN ladies, the Bristol SWANS, the Brighton mob (past and present), the Ellerslie Girls, Knowle Book (Wine) Club and all my lovely writer friends.

And finally … all the love in the world to Chris and Seth. You have my heart.

If you were gripped by
The Missing
, why not try …

Sue Jackson has the perfect family but when her teenage daughter Charlotte deliberately steps in front of a bus and ends up in a coma she is forced to face a very dark reality.

Retracing her daughter’s steps she finds a horrifying entry in Charlotte’s diary and is forced to head deep into her private world. In her hunt for evidence, Sue begins to mistrust everyone close to her daughter and she’s forced to look further, into the depths of her own past.

Sue will do anything to protect her daughter. But what if she is the reason that Charlotte is in danger?

Click
here
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Jane Hughes has a loving partner, a job in an animal sanctuary and a tiny cottage in rural Wales. She’s happier than she’s ever been but her life is a lie. Jane Hughes does not really exist.

Five years earlier Jane and her then best friends went on holiday but what should have been the trip of a lifetime rapidly descended into a nightmare that claimed the lives of two of the women.

Jane has tried to put the past behind her but someone knows the truth about what happened.

Someone who won’t stop un
til they’ve destroyed Jane and everything she loves …

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Author Note

Three things inspired
The Missing
– my mother and grandmothers, my son, and my love of abnormal psychology. My late grandmother Milbrough (Millie) had eleven children, a husband and a haulage business in the Worcestershire countryside. My other late grandmother, Olivia, had six children, a husband and lived in a mining community in Northumbria. They were matriarchs, the person family life revolved around, and they were loved and respected in equal measure. It’s only now that I have a small family of my own that I realize what incredible women they were. How strong must they have been to juggle that many children, a home, a marriage and a business. How tired must they have felt when they fell into bed every night. How stressed.

My mum continued the tradition of strong women in our family – an army wife with three children who set up her own florist business, and then re-trained to be a teacher in her forties – but she’s not alone. There are millions of women in this country, in the world, juggling home, family, ailing parents and work. As women we often put the needs of others before ourselves. We give up our time, our dreams and sometimes our food to provide for our children. We want everyone to be happy and, often, we put our own happiness last. I wanted to write a novel about a woman who was desperately trying to keep her family together, who had chosen to remain in an ailing marriage rather than break up their home and who no longer knew the minutiae of her children’s lives. I was struck by how quickly your children can change when my son went to pre-school earlier this year. Within months he was using words and phrases he hadn’t used before. He had friends I hadn’t met. He seemed to leap from toddler to young boy overnight and I found it quite disconcerting. I no longer had any control over what he heard, what he saw or what he did. I realized that my influence would continue to diminish as he continued to grow up, particularly when he hit his teenaged years.

That’s why I made Billy fifteen. I wanted him to be young enough to be vulnerable but old enough to be somewhat independent. I wanted him to have dreams and ambitions that his parents didn’t share and secrets that he’d never tell his mother. I wanted to explore what would happen when Claire, a control freak by nature, realized she no longer knew the son she’d nurtured for so many years. I wanted to see how she’d react when her family began to fall apart.

I decided to give Claire dissociative amnesia because I’ve always been fascinated by abnormal psychology and because I think our subconscious can have a powerful influence on our mind and body. We can say ‘I’m not scared’ but our hands will still shake or we’ll rush to the toilet. We can lie but our deceit can be read in micro expressions. Claire doesn’t believe that her family is responsible for Billy’s disappearance but her subconscious believes otherwise and, as a result of the stress of the situation, she suffers from fugues. I did a lot of research into dissociative amnesia before I started writing
The Missing
and Dr Jez Phillips was particularly helpful in answering my questions. I tried to be as faithful as I could to the information I unearthed but I did have to make a few tweaks to make the story more intense and unnerving. Firstly, people suffering from dissociative amnesia normally flee from a situation they find stressful. I had Claire escape to Weston for her first fugue but then, instead of her subconscious forcing her to run from her fears, it makes her confront them. That’s why she then follows various members of her family. The second aspect of the condition that I wasn’t faithful to was the frequency with which the fugues occur. They normally occur just once. On the rare occasion that someone suffers more than one fugue it won’t happen until months, or years, have passed. I didn’t want the pace of the story to flag so Claire’s fugues happen more frequently.

I do hope you enjoyed reading
The Missing
. I’d love to hear from you if so. You can write to me via my agent Madeleine Milburn or you can contact me on social media or via the form on my website.

http://www.facebook.com/‌CallyTaylorAuthor

http://www.twitter.com/callytaylor

http://www.cltaylorauthor.com

About the Author

C.L. Taylor lives in Bristol with her partner and son. She started writing fiction in 2005 and her short stories have won several awards and have been published by a variety of literary and women’s magazines. C.L. Taylor was voted as one of the Bestselling Adult Fiction Debut Authors of 2014 in
The Bookseller
.

Also by C.L. Taylor

The Accident

The Lie

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor