Ber Carroll is the author of 11 novels including You Had It Coming which was shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction and the 2022 Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel.
Her latest book, One of Us is Missing is a dark domestic thriller about the dangers lurking right in plain sight.
Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A tense domestic thriller about family secrets and human trafficking, perfect for fans of Sally Hepworth and Liane Moriarty
There’s no such thing as safety in numbers …
Rachel and Rory Sullivan decide to celebrate making it through a tough year by taking their children, Emmet and Bridie, to their first stadium concert. By the end of the night, one of the four has vanished without a trace.
As the police investigation intensifies, suspicion is cast on the remaining family members. Everyone has been deceiving one another, but who is to blame for what went wrong? The passing of each hour amplifies their terror that life will never be the same again.
EXTRACT
The stadium loomed above them, the air vibrating from the thump of music generated by the pre-concert DJ. Rory glanced up at the indigo-coloured clouds and witnessed the first flash of lightning.
‘Hold up.’ He held Emmet’s arm. ‘This is where we’ll meet after the concert.’
The kids had general admission tickets while he and Rachel had platinum seats: they’d been unable to buy four of the same tickets. At seventeen and fifteen, Emmet and Bridie were old enough to be on their own. This was a new phase in their family life, a phase where they did things differently, more adventurously. Because there were too many reasons to say no to things, too many reasons to let life pass you by.
‘Just be aware that you might exit on the opposite side of the stadium, and you might lose each other in the push of the crowd. Make sure you come down the steps at the front and that should point you in roughly the right direction.’
‘Yeah, got it,’ Emmet said impatiently. He was straining to get inside, to find a good spot before the first support band came on stage.
‘Bridie, are you listening? It’ll be harder to see in the dark, and the crowd will be much denser than this. Follow pedestrian directions to Central Station until you come past this point. Got it?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, Dad.’
Rachel handed the kids a print-out of their tickets. ‘Why does this suddenly seem like a bad idea? Maybe you should come with me, Bridie, and the boys go together?’
‘No, Mum, no way. Stop worrying, okay? I’ve got my phone, I know where we’re meeting up in the unlikely event that Emmet and I get separated.’ Rory was astonished at how firm Bridie’s voice sounded, how authoritative. She gave her mother a hug, to seal the deal. ‘We’re not idiots. Nobody’s getting lost, okay?’
They walked the kids to their gate and repeated the instructions as the first drops of rain speckled their arms.
‘This feels weird,’ Rachel said, looking back over her shoulder.
He agreed. They needed the kids to fill the awkwardness between them, to smooth over the undercurrents of distrust and hurt. He looked at her face, the crease above her nose that appeared whenever she was worried, the headscarf that was causing perspiration to bead on her skin.
‘I just hope Emmet keeps an eye on Bridie,’ she fretted, as the queue jostled forward at their gate.
‘She seemed confident that she could take care of herself,’ he said, amazed that he could chat as though nothing were wrong between them.
‘She’s trying so hard to look grown-up tonight. And Emmet’s half drunk. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he was doing at the park with his friends. Oh God, I hope they’ll be okay.’ Rachel gave another quick glance over her shoulder, even though the kids were long gone.
The turnstile was just a couple of metres away when the sky lit up. A deafening crack of thunder followed. On cue, the rain intensified.
Rachel frowned. ‘Oh shit, here we go.’
With damp clothes and rain-slicked faces, they took the escalator to the stands. Then they queued at the nearest bar for drinks before shuffling into their seats, which had a head-on view of the stage. Arcs of multicoloured light illuminated the rain as it pelted down on the half-filled field.
Rachel pulled a face. ‘I feel so guilty. The kids are going to get drowned.’
‘All part of the mosh pit experience,’ he said. ‘Anyway, the rain is warm, they won’t get cold, not really.’
Was this how they were going to get through the next few hours, politely talking about the weather, constantly wondering how the kids were faring?
Rachel touched her plastic glass against his. ‘Cheers. We made it.’
She was obviously talking about much more than the concert. She meant that they’d made it through a really difficult year; they’d made it through her illness; they’d made it through Emmet’s bombshell announcement. But they hadn’t made it, had they? Not if what Amy said was true.
‘Cheers,’ he replied hollowly.
Amy was Rachel’s oldest friend; discretion wasn’t her strong point. For an intense moment, Rory wished she hadn’t told him anything, wished that he was oblivious, that he could just enjoy the night.
Rachel huddled closer to him, one hand outstretched, holding her phone. ‘Smile,’ she instructed, and he automatically complied.
She showed him the photo. ‘I’ll send it to the kids. If one of them answers, we’ll know they’re okay.’
Rory just hoped the kids were living in the moment instead of constantly checking their phones.
‘Send it to Sean, too,’ he suggested. ‘If he responds, we can assume that the house hasn’t burned down.’
Rory had cornered his brother before leaving home, begging him not to drink while they were gone. Would Sean do as he’d asked? It wasn’t just the risk of forgetting to turn off an appliance or Sean falling and hurting himself. It was other dangers, too. A rock through the front window, or a firebomb, or whatever gangs used these days to intimidate people. If Sean had been the kind of brother Rory could confide in, he would have told him about the terrifyingly real dangers that even his wife knew nothing about.
‘Done,’ Rachel said, and slid her phone into her back pocket. An announcement came over the speakers: the support band would be delayed by thirty minutes, to give the storm time to pass over. ‘Looks like we’re here for the long haul,’ she said, and slid her arm through his. ‘At least we’re relatively close to the bar.’
Rory gulped his beer, the disco music roaring in his head, his heart constricting with pain. What was her agenda with these sudden shows of affection? Holding his hand on the train, cuddling into him now, resting her head on his shoulder as though nothing had happened.
He wanted to push her away, ask her what the fuck she was doing. But this wasn’t the time or place for an ugly confrontation, with people all around them, including security guards sniffing out even the slightest altercation. They were a long way from home, with nowhere to go to lick their wounds. And they’d spent so much money on the tickets, he felt sick at the thought of ruining the night. He needed to suck it up, wait for a better time. If he decided to say anything at all.
Rachel burrowed closer. Every muscle tensed in protest.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
Her brown eyes looked into his, probing, provoking, and even though it was the wrong place, the wrong time, he found that he couldn’t pretend for a moment longer.
‘You know what’s wrong, Rach … I just want to know his name.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ber Carroll (also known as B M Carroll) was born in Blarney, a small but famous village in Ireland. The third child of six, she often retreated from the chaos of family life by immersing herself in books. She has fond memories of the mobile library bus that used to pull up outside their house in Blarney and the dozen or so books she would borrow at a time, some quite inappropriate for her age.
Ber moved to Sydney in 1995 with her boyfriend (now husband) Rob. She got a job as a finance manager in the IT industry and began to climb the corporate ladder. The exciting and dynamic work environment captured her imagination and inspired her first novel. When Executive Affair was published, Ber flatly denied it was in any way auto-biographical. She now admits that the novel did have a lot of her in it, and suspects that half the people who purchased the book were her ex colleagues, to see if they were in it too.
Ber gave up her finance career when she realised that she couldn’t hold down a demanding job, be mum to two small children and write books to contractual deadline. She now writes full-time, but says that she misses getting dressed up for work and being around people who listen to what she has to say, unlike her kids!
Ber is the author of 11 novels. Her most recent novels The Missing Pieces of Sophie McCarthy, Who We Were, You Had It Coming, and The Other Side of Her are published under B M Carroll. You Had It Coming was shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction and the 2022 Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel.
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