The loss of innocents

Here are two novels about that most harrowing and haunting of subjects — children who go missing.

Here are two novels about that most harrowing and haunting of subjects — children who go missing. Rachel Billington’s Missing Boy is Dan, a 13-year- old runaway. Dan’s disappearance marks the beginning of a nightmare for his parents, Eve and Max, plus aunt Martha. Has Dan run away or has he been kidnapped? Will he be found? The if, where and how are the questions that torment them. As Ronnie, the police liaison officer puts it, though families vary, when there’s a missing child the suffering is always the same, a pattern of ‘disbelief, anger, terror, despair, endurance.’

On her website Billington describes the structure of The Missing Boy as ‘a kind of thriller with the boy’s safety under constant threat’ and it’s this that gives the novel its suspense. We follow Dan on a dangerous journey that has him sleeping rough, encountering an ex-prisoner (shades of the Pip/Magwitch encounter of Great Expectations), living in a squat and getting involved with latter-day hippies, travellers and drug dealers.

But the thriller-like structure is really a disguise for what is actually a very moral and Christian tale. Dan’s disapperance forces his parents to examine their marriage and their lives. Eve, a drama teacher, is rather more concerned with her group of difficult inner- city children than her own son. Max, a book rep and would-be poet, drifts between the beds of his wife and sister-in-law Martha. In fact drifting is what he does best. The themes of family Lies and Loyalties — the title of Billington’s 2008 novel — continues in this one, with the sisters’ relationship fraught with jealousy, dependence, love and rage.