The Child

The Child (2017), a novel by British author Fiona Barton, follows four women who are drawn together when a baby’s remains are discovered at a London building site. The follow-up to Barton’s acclaimed debut, The Widow, which also featured Daily Post journalist Kate Waters, The Child was well received by critics, who praised the thematic depth underlying the novel’s mystery plot: “This is as much a why-dunit as a whodunit, with the real question being whether it’s possible to heal and live with the truth after hiding behind a lie for so long” (Kirkus Reviews).

The novel opens as London-based newspaper reporter Kate Waters notes a small article in a rival newspaper, reporting that a baby’s skeleton has been found at the bulldozed site of a building in the city. Intrigued and a little moved by the story, Kate decides to dig for answers, hoping to turn up a bigger story.

Meanwhile, editor Emma Simmonds has also spotted the story, but her reaction is very different: Crushing anxiety torments her. Although she is a long-term anxiety sufferer, this is her worst episode yet. Nevertheless, she hides her feelings from her husband, Paul, an academic. Instead, she gets in touch with her mother, Jude, to ask if she has seen the news about the grim discovery at a site not far from their old house. Jude isn’t interested in the story; she wants to discuss her ex-boyfriend, Will. He has contacted her recently, and Jude is considering re-igniting their relationship. Emma discourages her, and we learn that Emma has good reason for disliking him: He convinced Jude to kick Emma out when she was just 16.



Kate’s investigation brings her to Angela Irving, another woman who reacted powerfully to the discovery of the baby’s skeleton. Forty years ago, her newborn daughter, Alice, was stolen from the maternity ward. No culprit has ever been found—and Angela and her husband endured years of suspicion themselves. At the time of the disappearance, they were living near the place where the skeleton has been found, and Angela feels sure that the skeleton is Alice’s. Kate is willing to pursue this possibility on their behalf, going to the police with Angela’s suspicions.

The police conduct a DNA test and discover that the baby is indeed the Irvings’. However, as they open a murder investigation, they immediately encounter a mystery: the baby was buried more than a decade after Alice disappeared.

More intrigued than ever, Kate begins chasing down former residents of the Irvings’ neighborhood, Howard Street, in search of clues. Her editor assigns a young reporter, Joe, to help her. Initially irritated by him, Kate soon comes to depend on his help. Together, they learn that the Irvings’ former landlord, Al Soames, was a serial rapist: together with an unknown partner, he drugged young women, raped them, and photographed their naked bodies.



Some of the residents of Howard Street organize a reunion, and Kate and Joe are invited. There they meet Emma, who grew up on Howard Street. When Emma learns that Kate is investigating the mystery of the buried child, she is overwhelmed with the need to unburden herself.

She confesses that she became pregnant when she was just 14. She managed to hide the pregnancy from her mother, and when the child was stillborn, she buried it in what was then a garden.

This confession emboldens Emma to return to the traumatic events of her adolescence. Emma reveals to Jude that Will raped her when she 14: It was this event that caused her to behave in ways that lead Jude to throw her out.



Meanwhile, Kate realizes that Will’s rape and manipulation of Emma was a tactic to prevent her from revealing his secret: He was Al Soames’s partner, and Emma had discovered a cache of their incriminating photographs. Kate and Joe find additional evidence connecting Will to Al Soames.

Emma goes to the police to confess to burying the baby. The Irvings demand a DNA test, which shows that the baby is indeed Emma’s. The Irvings are distraught: They have lost their baby again. Meanwhile, the police are flummoxed: The DNA tests showing the baby to be related to both Angela and Emma are infallible.

It is Joe who fits the last pieces of the puzzle together. The buried child is indeed Emma’s—it is related to the Irvings because Emma is Alice, the child who was stolen from the Irvings. Confronted with this hypothesis, Jude confesses to stealing Alice from the Irvings in the hopes of forcing a former boyfriend to marry her forty years earlier.



Emma—Alice—is reunited with her real parents, the Irvings. The police decline to press charges against Emma for the burial of her stillborn child. Will and Jude are both tried and found guilty. Emma and Angela—mother and grandmother—give the baby a proper burial.