You Don't Have To Be Good - Hardcover

Bea is middle aged, childless, has a dead-end job with the council in Cambridge, and is unhappily married to Frank, a selfish would-be writer, who amuses himself with the cleaning lady. Bea's successful sister, Katherine, is a consultant paediatrician with two kids whom Bea has minded off-and-on since they were small. One morning Bea simply disappears. Her workmates are concerned; her husband is bemused, hopeless and suspected by the police of foul play; her uptight sister becomes increasingly emotional. The police dig up Frank's patio; Katherine finds she somehow can't function without the sister who seems predictable now but who wasn't always like this; the children, more practically, check websites. Then a woman's body is found in a ditch...