Yorkshire, 1979. Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South. Because of the murders. Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all? So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don't. But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families - and between each other - than they ever thought possible.

1

Miv

It would be easy to say that it all started with the murders, but actually it began when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.

‘A woman in charge of the country just isn’t right. They’re not made for it,’ my Aunty Jean said, on the day the election results were announced. ‘As if the last lot weren’t bad enough. She’s the beginning of the end for Yorkshire, an’ I’ll tell you why an’ all.’

She was bustling about our small kitchen, vigorously rewiping surfaces I had already wiped. I was sat at the table, in my brown-and-orange school uniform, shelling peas into a colander on the chipped yellow Formica top, popping fresh ones into my mouth whenever she wasn’t looking. I wanted to point out that, like Margaret Thatcher, Aunty Jean was also a woman, but Aunty Jean hated being interrupted mid-flow and it was just the two of us, meaning there was no escape from her opinions, of which there were many. So many, she began to list them.

‘Number one,’ she said, her wiry grey curls bobbing along as she shook her head, ‘you take one look at that face, and you can see what power does to a woman: it hardens them. You can just tell she’s no heart, can’t you?’ She took a wooden spoon off the draining board and wagged it at me for emphasis.

‘Hmm,’ I mumbled.

For a moment, I considered just nodding occasionally while secretly reading the book I had open, a corner tucked under the colander to keep it flat. But though Aunty Jean’s hearing was less than sharp, her other senses were razor-like, and she would have smelled my inattention like a hunting dog.

‘Number two. She’s already taken milk away from poor children’s mouths and jobs from the hands of hard-working men.’