What I Couldn’t Tell You by Faye Bird
Book of the Week: 14 October 2018
Images from Shutterstock
Joe has taken the unauthorised loan of a motorbike from the garage where he works to take his girlfriend Laura to the river, but his plan to be alone with her is ruined when three menacing boys appear, take the bike from Joe and threaten Laura.
The scene then shifts to eight weeks later by which time Laura is in a coma and her family are preparing for their daily visit. Joe is missing and is number one on the list of people the police would like to interview. Laura’s brother Jake and younger sister Tessie have just returned to school after the trauma of Laura’s attack, but school is not a happy place for Tessie. She is selectively mute and is being bullied by two girls about her inability to talk. Tessie can talk at home, or at her friend Max’s house, when the doors are ‘proper shut’, but not in school or other places or when there are strangers about. She cannot even talk to the unconscious Laura in hospital, much as she wants to.
The tension of the first chapter does not let up as we follow Tessie’s attempts to uncover what happened to her sister and navigate complicated family relationships as well as a developing romance with the mysterious Billy.
