Seven Years Missing

For seven years Nora Ashby lay in a long-term care room in Toronto while the world moved on without her. Her husband Owen divorced her on legal advice and married her best friend Tessa. Her son Eli, four when she fell, is eleven now and calls Tessa 'Mom'. The only person who never stopped coming was her brother-in-law Graham, who read her the Sunday crossword every week. Then one Sunday she answers a clue. Nora has to relearn how to swallow, sit up, speak and walk, and how to be a mother to a boy who loves the woman who replaced her. She also has to find out what happened on the back stairs of the old Riverdale house, because the paramedics' report says her best friend lied about where she was standing, her phone holds a nine-second recording of someone whistling behind her, and the bruises on her arm were shaped like fingers. This is a work of fiction. All people, companies and care facilities are invented. The story includes a serious brain injury and long recovery, alcohol recovery and a fall at home; nothing in it is medical advice.