I could tell when my son started hiding things from me. He used to walk to school with a mischievous grin on his beautiful face. Now he avoids eye contact and keeps his head down. Since I discovered he’s being bullied by a classmate, I’ve spent every day worrying, my stomach churning with anxiety from the moment he leaves the house to the second he walks back through the door. Everyone keeps telling me I’m overreacting, but I won’t risk my child’s safety. My husband and I try to talk to the other boy’s parents, but it only makes things worse. Then our precious child is hurt. Enough is enough.

Deborah Jenkins pulls her coat around her as she sets out on her short walk home in the pouring rain. But she never makes it home that night. And she is never seen again.

Four years later, an abandoned baby girl is found wrapped in dirty rags on a doorstep. An anonymous phone call urges the police to run a DNA test on the baby. But nobody is prepared for the results. The newborn belongs to Deborah. She’s still alive.

I tell myself that Max couldn’t kill anyone. He’s a family man now, different to who he was before. Even so, I should go to the police right away. But I can’t. Because if I do, I’m scared they’ll start to suspect me. How much do I really know about the girl in room 12? And if the truth comes out, how far will I go to protect my precious family?

Everything changes when Mark comes home from a work trip with dark circles under his eyes. The police want to question him about the murder of a beautiful, blonde young woman. Mark swears he had nothing to do with it, that she was a colleague, nothing more.

When Ellie tells me she has a new boyfriend, I am absolutely thrilled and can’t wait to meet him. She finally seems so happy and in love. But there’s a catch. Ellie has never met him in person. In fact, he doesn’t even live in the same country. Our home is in England, but Daryl is in Los Angeles.

Our new home was meant to be a chance for us to start again; to make new friends and forget the past. And as I look around the barbeque we’ve thrown for our neighbors, I dare to dream that things will be all right. I watch my husband joking as he flips burgers and my daughter turning cartwheels on our sun-bleached lawn. And then my gaze falls on my son, Jacob, and his new girlfriend, Rose, in her light blue jeans and her green crop top. There is a worried expression clouding her beautiful eyes.... The next day I get a call from Rose’s mother that chills me to the bone.

My husband and I are fighting for our lives in hospital after a terrible car accident. But despite my pain, all I can think about is what our families will find behind our front door. The scarf that has been all over the news, belonging to a dead young woman with honey-coloured hair. I have to speak to the police before my husband can. I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, but when I hear my wife talking to the police, accusing me of the murder of an innocent woman, a cold fear grips me. I know I’ve got a temper.

Leah and her three best friends get changed into their pyjamas, eat pizza, and argue about what film to watch. They laugh together, until the early hours. But the next morning, Leah blinks open her eyes and sees three empty sleeping bags. The other girls are gone. Twenty years later. In her small hometown, still-haunted Leah has never been able to shake off the rumours and whispers. How could she have slept through it all? She must know what happened.

Ten years ago, deeply in love, I would have done anything for Thomas Kirkwood. But on the night of our graduation, fuelled by drink and drugs, Thomas’s lifeless body was found floating in the Kirkwood family lake. That weekend changed everything, and I swore I would never return to Kirkwood manor. Now, ten years later, I have been invited back to the place that holds such terrible memories for me, to a memorial weekend for Thomas, organised by his still-grieving mother Ada. But this is no ordinary weekend. This is a reunion to catch a killer.

Psychologist Margot Scott has a picture-perfect life: a nice house in the suburbs, a husband, two children and a successful career. On a warm spring morning Margot approaches one of her clients on a busy train platform. He is looking down at his phone, with his duffel bag in hand as the train approaches. That’s when she slams into his back and he falls in front of the train. Margot’s clients all lie to her, but one lie cost her family and freedom.

The doorbell rings, just days after my beloved husband’s sudden death. I don’t recognise the woman on our doorstep, with her blonde highlights, a diamond bracelet identical to my own and a bouncing baby boy in her arms. As I show her inside, I notice her eyes grow wide as she takes in our spacious hallway, and the big squashy sofas that we all used to pile on. She glances at the silver-framed family photos and my little daughter hiding behind my skirts. She looks at me, her blue eyes serious. ‘I’m sorry’ she says. ‘I am your husband’s girlfriend. And this is his son.'

When Janette answers the door to a potential customer looking to board his dog, she never imagines he has nefarious plans. But minutes later he’s dead and in her cellar. Weeks later she realises she’s pregnant. And so she becomes Mother and the baby Child, and a hidden life begins. But all secrets come out eventually.

I’ve been on edge the whole time because 15 years ago when we were living in this city my husband Jack did something that ripped our lives apart. I swore I would never come back here, but Jack insisted. One afternoon, in the blur of a crowd, I lose sight of my son. I can’t find him anywhere. Frantic, I call my husband. But what he tells me next shakes me to the core....

Liza Larkin, a recent med-school graduate on the cusp of her pathology internship, isn’t like most people. She would rather study the human brain or pound the heavy bag at the gym than spend time with others, and as an outsider she doesn’t let societal norms confine her. So when a stranger’s picture sends Liza’s schizophrenic mother deeper into psychosis, Liza does a reverse-image search to identify him. Upon discovering he is a trauma surgeon at a Massachusetts teaching hospital, she impulsively changes her pathology residency program of choice to his center.

It is every mother’s worst nightmare. Eight-year-old Kailey Richardson skips out of the school gates in her brand-new pink shoes and never makes it home. Between the school and the safety of her shiny red front door, someone has taken her.