Megan Nolan’s first novel, Acts of Desperation, was an enthralling account of a young woman’s ruinous romantic obsession. With its confessional register and intimate style, the novel seemed a natural extension of Nolan’s self-searching essays and columns. She might have produced a follow-up in a similar vein, looking to repeat the formula. Instead, she has braved new territory.

It’s May 1990 and three-year-old Mia Enright has gone missing from a council estate in southeast London. A stroke of luck places Tom Hargreaves, an ambitious young tabloid hack, on the scene before the incident has hit the news. He envisions the headlines with predatory glee, his excitement building when it emerges that Mia was last seen with another child, ten-year-old Lucy Green. Even better, Lucy’s family are ‘misanthropic Irish degenerates’, to quote Tom’s pitch to his editor at the Daily Herald, ‘who, it was fair to assume, lived at least partially off the welfare state’. Conveniently, Mia’s family are ‘saints’, according to the local community.

As soon as Mia’s body is found and Lucy is taken into police custody, Tom arranges for Lucy’s mother, grandfather and uncle to hide out in a small hotel, aided by a corrupt policeman and a hotelier friendly with the Herald. Although the Greens know that this is a