An Accusation A Novel

Who to believe - the distressed girl who says she was kidnapped or the middle-aged woman with no alibi and a chequered past? After 17-year-old Ellie Canning is found shivering on a country road, dressed only in ill-fitting pyjamas, her story of kidnap and escape enthrals the nation. A middle-aged woman with a crazy old mother has held her in a basement, chained to a bed with a blue-striped quilt, given her drinks from an old baby's sippy cup. But who and why? And what other secrets might this woman hide? Suzannah Wells, a once-famous soapie star and now a teacher at the local high school, seems dazed by the accusation ... to start with. But if she had few friends in the district, she has barely none now. And the evidence is strong: a dementia-affected mother, a house with a basement, a bed with a blue-striped quilt, and a sippy cup that belonged to her long-dead daughter. And Ellie Canning's DNA everywhere. The media can't get enough of Ellie. She's a girl-power icon, a social-media star. But is she telling the truth?