Kim is babysitting her grandson, Noah, because her daughter Tallulah is out with her boyfriend Zach. Kim doesn’t mind babysitting. She is madly in love with Noah. Plus, she wants Tallulah and Zach to be together, so she has told them to stay out as late as they want. But when Kim wakes up at 4:20 in the morning, she is startled to find that her daughter and Zach aren’t home yet. Their phones go straight to voicemail.

Thirty-four-year-old mystery writer Sophie and her older boyfriend Shaun have just moved to the country: He has been hired as the new lead teacher at Maypole House, a school for wayward kids of wealthy parents. Sophie thinks of it as “A school for failures” (10).

Shaun used to work at a big public school in London, but took the job at Maypole because his ex-wife Pippa sent their twins to an expensive private school and Shaun is expected to pay half the cost. Shaun and Sophie had only been dating six months when Shaun invited her to move in with him in the country. Her first instinct was to say no, but she talked herself into it, imagining the country will be the perfect place for writing.