Author(s): Patricia Tyrrell

Fiction

In a phonebooth beside a dusty Arizona highway, fifteen year old Cate listens in on yet another conversation between Les (the man who has raised her since she was an infant) and her mother. But this is no ordinary parental discussion, for the woman at the end of the line hasn'tseen her daughter since she was three years old, and the man in the phonebooth with Cate is the homeless drifter who abducted her from beside her sleeping parents over a decade ago.

Now Les has finally decided that the time has come for Cate to go home.

But how will Cate cope with learning to love a mother she can't remember, and with learning to reject the father-figure she has loved for twelve years?How will her English mother square the memories of her three-year-olddaughter with the hard-bitten, poorly educated and cynical teenager who turns up on her doorstep in Virginia? And what will happen to them both when the awful secret Cate is hiding is brought out into the open?