After my beautiful daughter Annabelle died in a tragic accident, I thought I would never recover. With my world in pieces, my husband Matthew did what he could to support me and our son, Noah. He hired a young woman, Reka, to help us at home, to be the mother for Noah that I couldn’t be. She cares for him like he’s her own.

The invitation is anonymous. It doesn’t say whose funeral I must attend, only that I can’t afford to miss it. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but when I arrive, I know immediately it isn’t. The name on the gravestone stops me in my tracks: Alice Anderson. That’s my name. Or at least it was. I want to run from this crowd of slick designer clothes and sunglasses hiding prying eyes. But I can’t show my fear. I have no choice other than to stay and find out who sent the invitation. Someone here knows the secret I’d kill to keep.

Nine months into motherhood, Elle is struggling. She’s battling being sidelined at work, fighting to feel at home in her post-baby body and feeling pressure to be intimate with her adoring husband, Dom. Why does everything seem so hard, especially when Dom is such a helpful, hands-on dad as well as an ever-attentive husband? Elle turns to her charismatic new colleague, Gabriel, to get through the day and red wine to soothe her at night. For a while, the distractions work until one night she wakes up bleary-eyed in a hotel room next to a man who’s not her husband. A dead man.

Jen Cartwright returns from holiday to find her new next-door neighbour is Stacey Abbott, her childhood bully. It could be coincidence—but when Jen's close friends start to abandon her, and Jen's livelihood becomes threatened, it seems that the vendetta from the past has begun again. But why now, twenty years later? And if Stacey isn't to blame, then who is? Or is Jen inventing her own nightmares as her career and marriage seem to be foundering around her?

In 2050s London, fear grips like a vice as a deadly virus sweeps the globe. The British prime minister tells her people to remain calm. A vaccine will be available soon, and as a precautionary measure children will be whisked away to undisclosed locations, kept safe until the storm passes. Marianne, Downing Street press secretary, doesn’t realise the futility until it is far, far too late. When the truth hits her, Marianne is forced to choose: stay with her family, or do whatever she can to help the doomed survive.